Over 14.5 million websites use Google Workspace, which is more than three times the number of websites using Microsoft 365 (which has its own red team). Google is famous for integrating email, calendars, documents, notes, and more into a single suite designed for collaboration.
However, accessibility comes with a price. As organizations digitize with Google’s solutions, nefarious hackers are trying to gain access to Google systems to wreak havoc on organizations’ sensitive data. That’s why Google employs specialized red teams to proactively identify and mitigate vulnerabilities within its systems.
As a highly skilled group of offensive security experts, this team is tasked with stress-testing Google’s defenses by simulating real-world attacks. The red team uncovers vulnerabilities, tests incident response, and pushes the limits of Google’s security infrastructure, helping the company stay on top of emerging threats. That’s good news for both Google and its customers.
Learn what Google’s red team is, the methods it uses to stress-test the tech behemoth’s systems, and why it’s such a critical component of Google’s commitment to user safety.
Google’s red team is an internal security team that specializes in identifying vulnerabilities in Google systems. The team assumes the role of an external attacker and uses advanced strategies to gain unauthorized access. This differs from penetration testing, which generally focuses on a specific application or software patch.
Google's red team operates as an offensive security team that proactively identifies vulnerabilities and weaknesses in Google’s systems, networks, and infrastructure. Their primary goal is to mimic real-world attack scenarios to address flaws before malicious actors can exploit them.
Google’s red team has several responsibilities, including:
The traditional Google red team focuses on simulating a variety of adversaries, including nation-states, Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, hacktivists, individual criminals, and malicious insiders. Their objective is to mimic these actors’ strategies, motives, goals, and tools to identify and address potential security weaknesses across Google’s infrastructure.
In contrast, Google’s AI red team is dedicated to evaluating and enhancing the safety of AI systems. This team conducts adversarial testing to simulate attacks on AI models to uncover vulnerabilities that could lead to social harms or cybersecurity issues. Their work involves assessing how AI systems can be exploited and developing strategies to mitigate these risks, ensuring the responsible development of AI technologies.
In short, the traditional Google red team concentrates on the security of Google’s overall infrastructure against a broad spectrum of threats, while the AI red team specializes in safeguarding AI systems by identifying vulnerabilities specific to AI applications.
Google's red team improves cybersecurity through proactive testing, vulnerability identification, and collaboration. Unlike pentesting, red teaming is a more comprehensive approach with a range of benefits, from improved security to long-term resilience.
Many organizations rely on Google as the backbone of their operations. It’s therefore crucial for Google to stay on top of potential vulnerabilities and patch them as soon as possible.
The organization simulates attacks by cybercriminals through the Google red team, helping it uncover security gaps. While red teaming isn’t foolproof, this approach significantly reduces the likelihood of data breaches.
Google also has an internal blue team that defends against malicious attacks, including those simulated by the red team. It’s the blue team’s job to defend against attacks and make improvements based on the red team’s findings.
The red team is necessary because it tests the blue team’s defensive capabilities with realistic attacks. These exercises show how quickly the blue team can detect and respond to threats. By analyzing gaps in detection or response, Google can improve its threat intelligence, monitoring systems, and incident response.
Millions of businesses worldwide rely on Google to be secure, highly available, and user-friendly. Its systems have to be ready for attacks on a global scale, especially as more organizations store sensitive information in their Google accounts.
Red teaming evaluates Google’s systems to ensure they can withstand sophisticated threats. That includes testing its cloud platforms, internal systems, and all consumer-facing applications. By pushing these systems to their limits, the red team helps resolve weaknesses in design, configuration, or code.
With AI playing an increasingly critical role in Google’s ecosystem, Google also has a red team focused on securing AI-driven systems. AI models are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, data poisoning, and model extraction threats, which can lead to biased outputs, misinformation, or security breaches.
AI systems are susceptible to adversarial attacks, where bad actors subtly alter inputs to deceive machine learning models. The red team conducts adversarial testing to expose these weaknesses before they can be exploited in real-world scenarios. Evaluating how AI models respond to these manipulations allows Google to refine its algorithms to detect and counter these threats effectively.
Additionally, the red team helps improve Google’s ability to recognize deepfake technology, AI-generated phishing attempts, and other evolving AI-driven security risks. Their insights contribute to refining AI-powered security features across Google’s products, such as Gmail spam detection and Google Cloud AI security solutions.
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into everyday applications, ensuring that models function safely and ethically is paramount. Google’s red team collaborates with AI researchers and engineers to address potential risks before deploying AI solutions at scale.
This proactive approach reinforces trust in AI systems, ensuring they remain reliable and resistant to security threats while maintaining compliance with ethical AI standards.
Both businesses and personal users rely on Google to offer best-in-breed security without compromising on the user experience. Google’s red team not only strengthens security but also sets a high standard for cybersecurity practices across the industry.
However, you can’t rely on Google’s red team for everything. Your systems are still a target for attackers — even if you’re a small business. Lean on Mindgard’s advanced red teaming capabilities to identify your vulnerabilities and boost threat detection. Schedule a demo today to safeguard your data.
Google’s red team is an internal team of highly skilled cybersecurity professionals with expertise in ethical hacking, penetration testing, reverse engineering, and exploit development.
Candidates typically have training and experience in red teaming, offensive security, or cybersecurity research. They also need advanced knowledge of programming, network security, and threat modeling.
Google’s red team is internally-facing only. However, Google does collaborate with external researchers through initiatives like the Google Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) and Project Zero. These programs help Google identify and patch security flaws in its products that internal red teaming might miss.
Google’s red team operates continuously to keep up with evolving threats. They regularly perform red teaming exercises and targeted attacks throughout the year. These assessments vary in scope and complexity, ranging from small-scale penetration tests to multi-month simulations.
