Show Maturity Journey and When an Organization Is Ready for Purple Teaming

The menace of cyber risk is ongoing and evolving annually. Accordingly, organizations must enhance their security measures before attacks and vulnerabilities are discovered. Today, many companies use cooperative security to beef up their security measures. Purple team readiness is one of the best ways!

But organisations are not going to be able to embark on purple teaming without preparation. They must have solid security bases, good monitoring, capable security teams, and good communication. Otherwise, the procedure is unhelpful and complicated.

This maturity journey enables companies to grasp their current maturity level and what changes they need to make before embarking on purple team operations. 

Schedule a Call with a Tech Expert

What Is Purple Team Readiness

Purple team readiness is when an organization is able to effectively perform Purple Team Security Testing between Offensive and Defensive teams.

Red Team vs Blue Team: Purple teaming is a simulation of attacking, and the blue team detecting and responding. In the meantime, both teams exchange information and share knowledge to enhance security controls. This helps to fortify the organization’s defense position more quickly.

Unlike traditional penetration testing, purple teaming is not about reports, but rather, continuous learning and improvement. Microsoft explains that purple teaming helps security teams work together in real time to validate detections and improve response against attacker techniques. 

Stage 1: Basic Security Foundation

This is the most basic level of security. This is the bottommost level of security.

All organizations begin with basic cybersecurity, and most start with the basics. In this stage, typically, companies would install firewalls, anti-virus, and password requirements. But, at this level, businesses still don’t have a good awareness of threats. Besides, teams are usually not coordinated with each other. So, it is not possible to reach full purple team readiness at this time.

Companies should: In this stage, the companies should:

• Build asset inventories
• Develop plans for responding to incidents
• Train employees regularly
• Centralize security logs

These steps are establishing a secure base for further development.

Stage 2: Improved Monitoring and Visibility

Organizations enhance monitoring after developing the simple controls. They use SIEM, Endpoint detection, and network monitoring solutions. As a result, security analysts are able to recognize suspicious activities more quickly. What’s more, the risks, system activity, etc., become more visible within the leadership.

This phase further helps build purple team readiness as teams now have a better understanding of how attackers traverse systems. In addition, organisations begin to record gaps and weaknesses in detection and response. Purple teaming exercises without the proper visibility are of little value. 

Stage 3: Strong Incident Response

It is at this point that an organization will be very busy with responses. Security teams develop playbooks, establish escalation procedures, and regularly perform response drills. Therefore, during actual incidents, analysts respond more quickly. Besides, the interdepartmental communication becomes greatly enhanced.

As purple team readiness increases, the time of response and the level of accuracy of detection are also measured. Thus, they are better able to see the weak areas. This phase enables organizations to shift from a reactive security mindset to proactively defending themselves. 

Stage 4: Security Collaboration

Security teams’ siloing is a challenge in many organizations. Red team conducts independent testing on systems, and blue teams defend systems independently. But in a well-developed organisation, there is the encouragement of cooperation rather than disconnection. In this stage, teams exchange threat intelligence, and attack simulations are regularly performed.

This partnership has a tremendous benefit to purple team readiness as defenders gain knowledge from offensive testing. Similarly, an attacker knows his/her opponent’s limitations. The more efficient and coordinated security teams are, the better the communication is. 

Stage 5: Threat Simulation and Validation

Businesses at this stage will actively probe defenses with realistic attack simulations. They continually test detection rules, response procedures, and monitoring systems. Now, purple team readiness has increased significantly as measures are shown to improve after exercises. In addition, organizations discover security vulnerabilities prior to attackers exploiting them.

Teams also simulate attacks to real-world attacks. This makes the security operations easier to implement and more intelligence-based. Frequent validation means protection against current cyber threats is maintained.

Real Life Example:

MITRE ATT&CK Evaluations use a collaborative purple-teaming approach to test cybersecurity solutions against real-world adversary techniques.  

Signs Your Organization Is Ready

A company is considered to be Purple Team Ready when there are several indicators that demonstrate this. In the event of an incident, security teams are able to communicate effectively. Second, organizations have good visibility of the endpoints, networks, and cloud systems. Thirdly, leadership is proactive in promoting security improvement efforts. In addition, companies that are prepared to go purple teaming typically:

• Regularly test for security issues.
• Ensure up-to-date Incident Response Plans are in place
• Employ central monitoring solutions
• Monitor and report detection and response metrics
• Encourage cross-team collaboration

These factors can aid in a successful purple team exercise without confusing the operations of the organization. 

Common Challenges During the Journey

There are many challenges encountered by many organisations in enhancing their purple team readiness. Communication issues between security teams are one of the key challenges. In addition, some companies don’t have the experts to analyze or quality monitoring applications. Consequently, it can be difficult for them to detect advanced attacks.

Limited budgets are also a constraint on progress. A gradual improvement of the maturity level is still possible with organizations, by way of training, process improvement, and better cooperation. The other one is the leadership expectations, which is a common challenge. 

Some executives would like to get a quick return for their investment without taking the time to invest in long-term security development. Thus, the process of purple teaming should not be a single event but a continuous process for improvement for organizations. 

Benefits of Purple Teaming

Organizations that have established a high level of purple team readiness will reap many benefits in the long run. First, they are quicker to sense the threats. Secondly, they save a lot of response time. Thirdly, they enhance collaboration among security departments.

In addition, organizations can find out about hidden vulnerabilities by collaborating in testing them, which can help them avoid becoming prey to their attackers. Thus, companies can mitigate their overall cyber risk. Purple teaming also establishes a culture of continuous improvement. Teams cooperate to build up their defenses, rather than taking shots at each other. 

Schedule a Call with a Tech Expert

Conclusion

Security testing has evolved from traditional methods over the years. There is a need for continuous validation of defenses, better communication, and more response capacity in the organizations. Businesses can take their security operations to a new level of robustness and collaboration with the maturity journey towards purple team readiness. Whilst it takes time, each stage makes for better visibility, coordination, and resilience.

Businesses that invest in preparation, monitoring, and collaboration, as well as in realistic testing, are much better equipped to deal with the cyber threats of today. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Purple Team Readiness?

Purple team readiness is a measure of how well an organisation can carry out collaborative security testing between the offensive and/or defensive teams. 

Why is purple teaming important?

Purple teaming helps enhance threat detection, response time, and teamwork among security teams. This leads to enhanced cybersecurity efforts by organizations. 

When should an organization start purple teaming?

Organizations should start purple teaming once they have implemented solid monitoring and incident response procedures, as well as a good process of communication between the teams.