Why Cybersecurity Teams Need to Break Their Own Defenses

If you’re not testing your security, you don’t have security.

Do you believe your security tools are blocking or detecting threat actor X? Are you sure??

I can recall many cases where we thought a feature was enabled, but—womp, womp—it wasn’t.

Attackers are constantly testing you. Scanning, phishing, infiltrating your supply chain, you name it.

If an attacker wants to access something, they will.

Just give them enough time.

Cool. Cool. Cool. But how do I test?

Conducting Red Team and Purple Team exercises will be your best bet.

Crafting a Stronger Security Palette

Blue Teams are your defenders, standing guard and responding to threats affecting your organization.

Red Teams are your adversaries (the friendly kind), simulating real world attacks to uncover vulnerabilities before the real adversaries do.

Purple Team brings both of these sides together, turning attack vs. defense into a collaborative effort that strengthens your entire security posture.

With these approaches, your goal is to simulate real attacks in your environment. Production is ideal for real-world validation, but start where you can—dev, test, or even isolate simulations using tools like Attack Range. You must prove yourself to leadership before you get the keys to the kingdom. Test in dev or other less risky environments first to confirm this is valuable.

Brush the Dust Off Those Playbooks

We all have incident response teams, and some have playbooks. Why don’t you test those out? Ensure the SOC is prepared to handle any detection and respond accordingly. Did they fail? It’s better to find out during testing than in an actual attack! Use it as a teaching moment; learning from it is essential.

One Step at a Time

Don’t try to run an entire attack chain on the first try.

Use a tool like Atomic Red Team and execute one or two TTPs. For example, start with a simple credential dumping test before diving into complete lateral movement scenarios. Document and share your findings. Continuous improvement is the goal! Each test is a chance to improve and harden defenses. Slowly improving things is better than ignoring all the bad out there.

Final Thought: Break It Before Someone Else Does

• Key takeaways:

  • Red team your environment.

  • Purple team your environment.

  • Simulate real attacks.

  • Test your IR playbooks.

  • Start small and iterate.

  

  What’s the worst security failure you’ve seen from a lack of testing? Drop it in the comments.

Want more on red team, purple team, or adversary emulation? What else? Let us know.