Definition

What is Red Team?

A group of security professionals who simulate sophisticated, persistent adversaries to test an organization's ability to detect and respond to real-world attacks. Red team engagements are typically longer (weeks to months), goal-oriented (e.g., exfiltrate sensitive data or deploy a simulated ransomware payload), and operate with minimal advance notice to defenders. Red teaming differs from penetration testing in its focus on adversarial simulation and detection measurement rather than comprehensive vulnerability discovery.

Related terms

Blue Team →

The defensive security team responsible for protecting an organization's assets, detecting attacks in progress, and responding to security incidents.

Purple Team →

A collaborative security exercise in which red team (offensive) and blue team (defensive) practitioners work together in real time to simulate attacks and immediately measure detection and response quality.

Penetration Testing →

A structured, authorized simulation of a real-world cyberattack against a system, network, or application with the goal of identifying exploitable vulnerabilities before malicious actors do.

Ethical Hacking →

The authorized practice of using offensive attack techniques against a system to identify security weaknesses before malicious actors can exploit them.

Put this into practice

AI penetration testing for web applications →

See how Penetrify's autonomous AI agents find and validate this class of security issue in your application.