What is Purple Team?

What is Purple Team?

In the realm of cybersecurity, the concept of purple teaming has emerged as a strategic approach to enhance organizational defenses by blending the roles of red and blue teams. A purple team is a collaborative group of cybersecurity professionals who not only perform the functions of both red and blue teams but also act as a conduit for communication and coordination between these two entities. 

This dual role is crucial in the context of IT network penetration testing, where red teams simulate attacks to identify vulnerabilities, and blue teams focus on defending against these attacks. The idea behind purple teaming is to create a dynamic environment where offensive and defensive strategies are continuously tested and refined. According to cybersecurity experts, purple team exercises are collaborative efforts between offensive security teams, who act as intruders, and defensive teams, who act as protectors. These exercises allow defenders to validate their defenses, identify gaps in controls, uncover weaknesses, and understand how adversaries adapt in real-time. Purple teams play a crucial role in optimizing and maximizing the learnings for both red and blue teams, ensuring that they either provide the best insights for the client or leverage those insights to enhance their security operations center (SOC). By fostering a collaborative environment, purple teams help red and blue teams share information, correlate findings, and leverage subsequent insights to maximize the hardening of attack surface defenses and network integrity.

Purple Team Mitigation Cycle

The purple team mitigation cycle is a structured approach that breaks down the broader function of purple teaming into technical segments. This cycle is continuous and should be repeated regularly to ensure ongoing improvement. The primary goal of the purple team is to ensure that red and blue teams continuously improve their solutions to exploitable vectors and identify new vulnerabilities. The mitigation cycle typically includes the following phases:

• Collaboration: Red and blue teams work together to identify vulnerabilities and attack vectors, prioritizing risks based on potential impact. This phase involves detailed planning and coordination to ensure that both teams are aligned in their objectives and methodologies.
• Execution: Red and blue teams conduct their respective attack-and-defend functions to strengthen the organization's overall security posture. Red teams simulate real-world attacks to test the effectiveness of blue team defenses, while blue teams implement and refine their defensive strategies.
• Validation: The purple team ensures that remediation efforts are effective against red team "attacks." This involves validating the effectiveness of patches, security controls, and other defensive measures implemented by the blue team.
• Remediation: Efforts are made to create patches, seal off exploitable vectors, and implement new network security controls. This phase focuses on addressing identified vulnerabilities and strengthening the organization's security posture.
• Iteration: Continuous improvement of combined processes to attack, defend, mitigate, and remediate vulnerabilities. This involves regular reviews and updates to ensure that the organization remains resilient against evolving threats.

Purple Team Exercises and Activities

While the roles of red and blue teams are generally well-defined in the cybersecurity industry, the day-to-day activities of purple teams can be less clear. The primary role of a purple team is to foster collaboration between red and blue teams, ensuring that both sides gain valuable insights from penetration testing exercises. Some specific examples of purple team exercises include:

• Phishing Attack Simulations: Testing the effectiveness of phishing defenses to identify potential weaknesses in user awareness and email security controls.
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Evaluating the ability to detect and respond to endpoint threats, ensuring that the organization can quickly identify and mitigate potential breaches.
• Active Directory Exploitation: Identifying vulnerabilities in Active Directory configurations to ensure that critical identity and access management controls are secure.
• Web Application Exploitation: Assessing the security of web applications to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
• Data Loss/Exfiltration Simulations: Testing the ability to prevent data breaches and ensure that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access and exfiltration.

Purple Team Frameworks

The Atomic Purple Team framework is designed to build, deploy, and justify "attack-detect-defend" exercises tailored to the unique business goals of each organization. This lifecycle includes:

• Threat and Exposure Management: Identifying and managing potential threats to the organization, ensuring that risks are prioritized and addressed effectively.
• Planning: Developing strategies for attack and defense, including detailed plans for simulating attacks and implementing defensive measures.
• Attack Execution and Simulation: Conducting simulated attacks to test defenses, ensuring that red team activities are realistic and effective in identifying vulnerabilities.
• Detection and Defense Building: Enhancing detection and defensive capabilities based on findings from the simulated attacks, ensuring that the organization can respond effectively to real-world threats.
• Optimization and Adjustment: Refining and hardening defenses based on findings, ensuring that the organization continuously improves its security posture.
• Reporting: Providing detailed reports on the effectiveness of security measures, including recommendations for improvement and insights gained from the exercises.

Another example is the Purple Team Exercise Framework, which helps organizations understand the basics of purple teaming and implement it in various ways, such as ad-hoc, operationalized-as-new-threats-emerge, or dedicated/continuous.

What are the benefits of purple teaming?

The benefits of purple teaming are significant, especially in terms of maximizing the value derived from red and blue team exercises. The presence of a purple team ensures that insights are shared, findings are correlated, and subsequent actions are taken to strengthen security defenses.

• Improved Detection and Response: By leveraging insights from red and blue team exercises, SOC leaders can enhance monitoring and alerting capabilities, refining incident detection and response programs. This ensures that the organization can quickly identify and mitigate potential threats.
• Foster Collaboration and Innovation: Effective purple teams minimize friction between red and blue teams, encouraging collaboration and data sharing to achieve the ultimate goal of strengthening security. By fostering a collaborative environment, purple teams help red and blue teams share information, correlate findings, and leverage subsequent insights to maximize the hardening of attack surface defenses and network integrity.
• Validate Systems and Increase ROI: Purple teaming helps validate the effectiveness of existing security systems and provides recommendations for improvement, ultimately increasing the return on investment (ROI) for security initiatives. By ensuring that security measures are effective and aligned with organizational goals, purple teams help organizations make the most of their security investments.

Best Practices for Purple Teaming

To achieve an effective mitigation cycle and consistently generate valuable insights, purple teams should follow these best practices:

• Test the Incident Response Plan: Ensure that the blue team can effectively follow the red team's movements and identify key indicators of compromise, such as privilege escalations and lateral movements. This involves simulating real-world attacks to test the effectiveness of the incident response plan.
• Document and Preserve: Maintain detailed records of the incident response process, including actions taken by blue team members, to ensure the reliability of evidence and support digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) efforts. Proper documentation is crucial for understanding the attack lifecycle and identifying areas for improvement.
• Review Performance: Conduct after-action reviews to identify what worked and what didn't in the incident response plan, using these lessons to improve future defenses. This involves analyzing the effectiveness of defensive measures, identifying gaps in controls, and developing strategies for continuous improvement.

By following these best practices, purple teams can ensure continuous improvement in their organization's security posture, making them more resilient against evolving threats. This collaborative approach not only enhances the effectiveness of security measures but also fosters a culture of continuous learning and improvement within the organization.

Conclusion

Purple teaming represents a significant evolution in cybersecurity practices, moving beyond traditional red and blue team exercises to foster a more collaborative and comprehensive approach to threat detection and response. By integrating the offensive and defensive capabilities of red and blue teams, purple teams create a dynamic environment where both sides can continuously learn, adapt, and improve. This collaborative approach not only enhances the effectiveness of security measures but also ensures that organizations remain resilient against a wide range of evolving threats. The continuous cycle of collaboration, execution, validation, remediation, and iteration ensures that purple teams can effectively identify and mitigate vulnerabilities, strengthening the overall security posture of the organization. By leveraging the insights gained from these exercises, organizations can make informed decisions, optimize their security investments, and stay ahead of potential threats. In an era where cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the role of purple teams is more critical than ever. They provide a unique opportunity for organizations to validate their defenses, foster innovation, and ensure that their security operations are aligned with their business goals. By embracing purple teaming, organizations can achieve a higher level of security resilience and better prepare themselves for the challenges of the future.