Is a red team assessment same as a penetration test?
Learn differences between a red team assessment and a penetration test with a simple analogy.
I have selected a relatively easier but crucial to understand topic for today. Pentesting vs Red Teaming. I will not use any technical jargon to explain this but a simple analogy.
Imagine, there has been an increase in number of break-ins in your neighborhood and you are worried that the next one might be in your house. So, you hire a consultant to find out all ways that your house can be broken into and recommend solution to fix those methods (penetration testing). You also hire a “trusted” thief to break into your house and see what all valuables they could lay their hands on (red teaming).
After a couple of days, the consultant comes back to you with ten different ways they could break into your house and recommendations to fix them. The “trusted” thief comes back to you (if you are lucky) with a bundle of cash that you thought was well hidden. The $#@t just got real. You realize that your house and your valuables are not as well-protected as you expected them to be.
As a thought exercise, whose findings (consultant’s or “trusted” thief’s) will you take more seriously or fix first?
If you read the above example carefully, you would have noticed that the consultant’s job was just to find out ways the house could be broken into but the “trusted” thief’s job was more objective oriented. The “trusted” thief didn’t care about nine other ways the house could be broken into as long as one worked for them. It was just a means to achieve their objective, stealing valuables. Their success highlighted weak points that the consultant may have not discovered or were out of scope for their job (non-functional CCTVs, alarms not working, cash not hidden well enough etc.).
Red Team Notes
Penetration Testing
Focuses on identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems, applications, or networks. The primary goal is to determine how an attacker might breach security controls.
Red Team Assessment
Simulates a real-world attack to test the organization's overall defense mechanisms, including detection, response, and recovery. The goal is to assess the readiness of people, processes, and technology against a sophisticated adversary.Follow my journey of 100 Days of Red Team on WhatsApp or Discord.
The answer is, findings from both are important and must be fixed. Obviously, you’ll want to choose a different hiding place for your bundle of cash first but you’ll also wouldn’t want nine other thieves find it. So both, penetration testing and red team assessments are necessary and one cannot replace the other.