Under Attack?
Red Team Exercises
A red team exercise tests your detection and response against a covert, multi-vector attack, with the scope and rules of engagement agreed with you before it starts.
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What is Red Teaming?
A red team exercise is an intelligence-led attack simulation that tests how your organization prevents, detects and responds to a realistic threat. Penetration testing works through an agreed scope, looking for exploitable weaknesses. Red team exercises start from an objective a real attacker would hold, and pursue it by whatever route works.
Typical objectives include:
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Reaching sensitive data
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Compromising a critical system
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Bypassing a specific security control
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Testing how your incident response performs under realistic conditions
Engagements combine technical attack, social engineering, phishing and physical intrusion, sequenced the way an adversary would use them. You get remediation guidance for the weaknesses found along the way, and an account of how your detection and response performed at each stage.
How a red team engagement runs
Every engagement starts with objectives agreed with you, alongside rules of engagement covering what is in scope, which systems stay untouched, and who inside your organization knows the exercise is underway.
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Intelligence gathering: Open-source research on your organization, your people, your technology and your suppliers, assembling the picture a real adversary would build before acting.
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Initial access: Attempts through whichever routes suit the objective, including phishing, exposed services and physical entry to your premises.
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Lateral movement: Moving from that first foothold toward the objective, testing segmentation, privilege boundaries and monitoring along the way.
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Objective and evidence: Reaching the agreed objective, with evidence captured at each step for the debrief.
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Debrief: Your security team walks the full timeline with the red team, matching what happened against what was detected and when.
The debrief is where most of the value lands. Seeing an attack replayed against your own alerting shows which controls worked, which fired late, and which never fired at all.
Benefits of red team exercises
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Exposures outside your usual scope: Objectives pursued by any available route surface weaknesses that sit beyond the areas you already monitor.
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Digital and physical controls together: How your technology and your premises hold up, measured in a single engagement.
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Detection and response, timed: How quickly activity is noticed, escalated and contained, set against what the red team did and when.
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Awareness training under pressure: Whether training translates into behaviour when someone is being manipulated in the moment.
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A prioritized remediation plan: Findings ordered by the routes that mattered most, each with the change that closes it.
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Evidence for regulators and your board: Assurance that your controls have been tested against realistic adversary behaviour.
CREST accreditation is independently assessed rather than self-declared, covering technical capability, ethical conduct and quality of delivery. Your engagement follows the methodology and standards it certifies.
What a red team exercise can include
Scope follows the objectives you choose, and how wide it goes is your call. Some organizations want the broadest possible view; others keep the exercise contained to specific systems, sites or business hours. We'll set boundaries you're comfortable with before objectives are agreed. An engagement can draw on any of these attack vectors:
Network and infrastructure
Your external perimeter, internal networks, and the paths between them.
Applications and cloud
The systems holding the data an objective points toward.
People
Phishing, phone and in-person approaches aimed at the roles a real attacker would target.
Premises
Physical entry attempts, from reception through to restricted areas.
Legal and non-destructive throughout
Methods agreed in advance, with nothing that risks your availability or your data.
Starting position
From outside your perimeter, or from an assumed-breach position inside it, depending on what you want to learn.
Our Certifications
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Schedule a red team excercise
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Access key insights
Red team FAQs
What is a red team exercise?
A red team exercise is a realistic, goal-oriented cyber attack simulation that tests an organization’s ability to detect, respond to, and recover from a sophisticated, stealthy threat. It emulates the tactics of real-world attackers across the full kill chain.
How is red teaming different from penetration testing?
Penetration testing focuses on identifying and exploiting specific vulnerabilities in a controlled scope. Red teaming tests the effectiveness of your defences by simulating adversary behaviour, often without alerting your security team, to assess detection and response capabilities.
What does Integrity360’s red team exercise include?
While we customize the exercise based on your needs, a typical red team exercise includes:
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Threat intelligence-led attack simulation.
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Reconnaissance, exploitation, and lateral movement.
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Objective-based operations (e.g. data exfiltration, domain compromise).
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Defensive capability testing.
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Full debrief with a detailed report, impact analysis, and actionable recommendations.
Who should conduct a red team exercise?
Red teaming is ideal for mature organizations looking to validate the effectiveness of their SOC, incident response, and detection technologies. It’s particularly beneficial for financial services, critical infrastructure, and regulated industries.
Is the red team exercise safe for production environments?
Yes. All actions are carefully scoped, risk-managed, and authorized in advance. Integrity360 uses proven frameworks (e.g. MITRE ATT&CK) and experienced testers to ensure operations are realistic but non-disruptive to your organization's operations.
Does red teaming support compliance and cyber maturity?
Yes. Red teaming aligns with frameworks including ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI DSS, and OSFI guidelines, demonstrating proactive risk management and helping build executive confidence in cyber resilience.
Can the exercise include physical and social engineering elements?
Absolutely. Integrity360 can integrate phishing, vishing, badge cloning, tailgating, and other social engineering tactics to assess physical and human-layer security as part of the full attack path.
Why is red teaming important?
Red teaming helps organizations understand how well their people, processes, and technology can withstand a real-world cyber attack. By simulating the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by genuine threat actors, a red team exercise can identify security gaps, test detection and response capabilities, and uncover weaknesses that may not be revealed through standard security assessments.
What are the objectives of a red team assessment?
The primary objective of a red team assessment is to evaluate an organization's ability to prevent, detect, and respond to a realistic cyber attack. A red team engagement may seek to achieve specific attacker goals, such as gaining access to sensitive data, compromising critical systems, bypassing security controls, testing employee awareness, or assessing the effectiveness of incident response procedures.
How long does a red team engagement take?
The duration of a red team engagement depends on the scope, objectives, and complexity of the assessment. Smaller engagements may be completed within a few weeks, while larger, intelligence-led exercises involving multiple attack vectors, locations, or business units can last several months. The timeline typically includes planning, reconnaissance, attack simulation, reporting, and remediation recommendations.
What does Integrity360’s red team exercise include?
The service includes:
- Threat intelligence-led attack simulation
- Reconnaissance, exploitation, and lateral movement
- Objective-based operations (e.g. data exfiltration, domain compromise)
- Defensive capability testing
- Full debrief with a detailed report, impact analysis, and recommendations
What makes Integrity360’s red team service different?
Our red team testers are CREST-certified, threat-led, and deeply experienced. We provide tailored scenarios, real-world attack emulation, and actionable insights, focusing beyond simple entry, onto long-term detection and response improvement.
