Red teaming is a proactive and holistic approach to assessing an organization’s cyber defenses. With this strategy, ethical hackers think like malicious attackers to simulate real-world attacks against an organization. Their goal is to expose and mitigate any vulnerabilities before actual attackers can exploit them.
While red teaming is an effective tactic, it requires time and resources, and it’s crucial for any organization investing in red teaming assessments to measure the results of each test.
Not only does this ensure the organization maximizes its resources, but it also quantifies the value of consistent red teaming.
In fact, measuring success is just as important as running the test itself. In this guide, we’ll explore the key ways to evaluate a red teaming assessment, ensuring your business gets actionable insights instead of just another report collecting dust.
Most red teaming exercises reveal gaps that need to be addressed. While that alone is valuable, organizations must also ensure that their red team assessments deliver actionable improvements.
Businesses should measure the effectiveness of red teaming to:
So, how do you know if a red teaming assessment is valuable? Follow these best practices to accurately measure the impact of red teaming on your organization.
While many red teams use similar exploits to test organizational defenses, every business is different. You can’t understand the value of a red teaming assessment without a goal to measure it against.
Establish specific goals for the red teaming assessment, such as testing cybersecurity defenses, physical security, or employee awareness. That will make it easier to review results after the test and better understand if the assessment delivered value.
The easiest way to understand the effectiveness of red teaming is to monitor changes in security metrics like:
Business economic impact is one of the most effective ways to measure the effectiveness of red teaming. Assess how the simulated attack affected business continuity, company finances, and system downtime in terms of dollars.
Understanding and sharing these costs will also help stakeholders support future investments in security.
As generative AI systems become increasingly integrated into business operations, their security vulnerabilities present unique challenges. Red teaming assessments are critical for identifying and mitigating these vulnerabilities, but measuring their effectiveness requires a tailored approach.
Generative AI systems, such as large language models (LLMs) or AI-driven content creation tools, have distinct attack surfaces posing unique risks such as prompt injection, data poisoning, and model extraction, among others. To measure the effectiveness of a red teaming assessment, organizations must first establish clear, generative AI-specific goals. These might include:
Setting relevant objectives helps to ensure that red teaming exercises are aligned with the unique risks posed by generative AI.
Traditional security metrics like TTD and TTR remain relevant, but additional metrics are needed to address generative AI-specific threats.
The table below shows some of the key metrics to track. These metrics provide a clearer picture of how well the generative AI system is protected against emerging threats.
Generative AI systems often play a critical role in business operations, from customer service to content creation. A successful red teaming assessment should quantify the potential business impact of vulnerabilities specific to these systems, such as:
Translating vulnerabilities into financial terms can help organizations justify investments in generative AI security.
Generative AI systems often require human oversight to function effectively. Red teaming assessments should evaluate both the technical and human elements of AI security. Some key questions to answer include:
Generative AI is a rapidly growing field, and so are its associated threats. Measuring the effectiveness of a red teaming assessment should not be a one-time activity.
Instead, leverage red teaming tools such as continuous automated red teaming (CART) to conduct regular red teaming assessments and stay ahead of new attack vectors.
Use the insights gained from each assessment to refine AI security policies and procedures, and continuously update training programs to ensure employees are aware of the latest threats.
Red teaming is a smart addition to any cyber security strategy, but organizations still need to understand its value. Tracking performance and key metrics will help your company assess its defense capabilities and overall preparedness against threats.
A successful red teaming assessment goes beyond identifying weaknesses—it provides a clear roadmap for mitigation, enhances collaboration between security teams, and aligns security strategies with industry standards and business objectives.
Partner with Mindgard to foster a more holistic approach to cyber security. Request a demo now to see how our red teaming professionals secure AI models against nefarious threats.
Absolutely. Unlike standard security audits that check for basic best practices, red teams think like an attacker. They find creative, unexpected ways to exploit people, processes, and technology.
If the red team doesn’t succeed in breaking in, that’s great news, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Success isn’t just about finding gaps; it’s also about testing response times, employee reactions, and overall preparedness.
Even if the team doesn’t find major vulnerabilities, businesses should still analyze how well their teams reacted to the simulation.
Security isn’t a one-time fix—it’s an ongoing process. One of the biggest mistakes is treating the results as a checklist instead of a strategy. Red team assessments become expensive, unhelpful exercises if companies fail to prioritize, address, and monitor threats.
