If you’re serious about cybersecurity in 2026, then you need to establish a purple team framework inside your organization. Threat actors are deploying AI-assisted attack chains, exploiting cloud misconfigurations at scale, and moving laterally through networks.
Therefore, a purple team framework gives your organization a structured and repeatable process to continuously validate defenses. In this blog, we’ll walk you through exactly how to build one from the ground up, even if you’re starting with limited resources.
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Foundation to Establish Purple Team Framework
Before you run a single exercise, you need to lay the right foundation. You must align three core elements to establish a purple team framework, such as
- People
- Process
- Technology.
People identify who will participate. You need representatives from your red team (or offensive security function) and your blue team (SOC analysts and detection engineers). Furthermore, leadership buy-in is non-negotiable. Without executive support, the program will stall the moment it competes for budget or resources.
Process defines how exercises will run, how findings get documented, and how detection improvements get tracked. A framework without a documented process quickly becomes inconsistent and unmeasurable. Inventory your current security stack with technology. Know your SIEM platform, your EDR solution, and your log coverage across endpoints.Â
Step 1: Define Your Threat Profile
The first real step to establish a purple team framework is building a clear threat profile for your organization. Ask yourself which threat actors actively target your industry? What are their preferred TTPs? Â
You can build this profile using a combination of sources. Use MITRE ATT&CK to identify the techniques most commonly associated with relevant threat actor groups. Additionally, use premium threat intelligence feeds like Recorded Future or Mandiant Advantage to track active campaigns. Map your threat profile to a prioritized list of ATT&CK techniques.
Step 2: Build Your Exercise Library
Once you have your threat profile, you need to build an exercise library. A curated set of attack scenarios that your team will execute, detect, and improve against repeatedly. Each scenario should map directly to specific MITRE ATT&CK techniques and sub-techniques.
For example, if ransomware operators targeting your industry commonly use spearphishing. Then those three techniques become individual exercises in your library. Moreover, you should use tools like Atomic Red Team to execute these techniques in a controlled and repeatable way.
As you establish a purple team framework, your exercise library will grow over time. Consequently, you’ll build comprehensive coverage across all major ATT&CK tactic categories.
Step 3: Run Your First Purple Team Exercise
Now you’re ready to execute. Here’s how a structured exercise flows in a mature framework:
- Pre-exercise briefing: The red team shares the attack scenario, then the specific ATT&CK techniques they’ll execute and the tools they’ll use. It’s a collaborative test of your detection capabilities.
- Execution phase: The red team executes each technique while the blue team monitors their SIEM, EDR, and network detection tools. Both teams communicate openly throughout. When the blue team misses a detection, the red team immediately explains what they did.
- Gap analysis: After execution, both teams analyze every detection miss. They document the specific log sources that lacked visibility and the detection rules that needed updating.
- Detection tuning: The blue team then writes new Sigma rules, updates KQL queries in Microsoft Sentinel, or refines SPL logic in Splunk. In the end, the red team re-executes this method to check that the enhancement is working in the real world.
Step 4: Measure Metrics That Show Value:
To continue investment in a purple team framework, you must measure and report on metrics. Leadership doesn’t want a laundry list of techniques you tried, but concrete security improvements you made. The most relevant metrics are the following:
- The detection rate by ATT&CK tactic: What portion of the techniques in each tactic are your blue team detecting currently?
- Mean time to detect (MTTD): From the point of technique execution to an alert, how long does it take?
- The gap closure rate: Out of the detections you discovered missing in an exercise, how many did you manage to close before the next exercise?
- The re-test pass rate: How many of the missed tests the red team re-ran did your blue team detect?
Beyond just tracking these, ensure the metrics are charted into a dashboard that you can update every cycle to tell a concrete story of progress.
Step 5: Mature and Scale the program
Once you have the foundation of the previous steps laid, you’re ready to mature and scale your purple team. Leading organizations are maturing purple team programs in 2026 in the following ways:
Automate continuous control validation
Companies like Picus Security and Attack IQ run simulated attacks automatically daily against your stack. This gives you continuous visibility rather than point-in-time results.
Expand cloud coverage
As your program matures, extend your exercise library to cover cloud native attack techniques. This includes IAM privilege escalation in AWS and container breakout scenarios in Kubernetes environments.
Integrate with your SOAR platform.
Connect your Purple Team findings directly to your Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response platform so detection improvements automatically trigger playbook updates.
Run tabletop exercises alongside technical drills.
Technical exercises test your tools. Tabletop exercises test your people and processes. Both are essential components of a mature framework.
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Conclusion
When you bring your red and blue teams together in a structured way, you stop guessing about your defenses. Furthermore, you build a security culture where offense and defense actively make each other stronger. Start small, stay consistent, track your progress, and scale deliberately. The threats targeting your organization won’t slow down, but with the right framework in place, neither will you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should we run purple team exercises once the framework is established?
 Most organizations run focused exercises monthly and broader scenario-based exercises quarterly. Consistency matters far more than frequency.
Can small security teams with limited resources still establish a purple team framework?
Absolutely. Start with one threat scenario, two or three ATT&CK techniques, and your existing team. Even a single analyst on each side running structured exercises consistently.
