Cyber crime will cost businesses an estimated $10.5 trillion globally this year. Losses also increased by 22% from 2022 to 2023, indicating that cyber threats are becoming more costly to businesses.
These trends are driven by an increase in cyber threats, as well as organizations continuing to use outdated approaches to cybersecurity.
Traditional cybersecurity approaches focus on defensive strategies, such as antivirus software and firewalls. While these can be effective, proactive strategies like offensive security (OffSec) are the new standard.
Red team OffSec, in particular, allows businesses to flip the script, uncover hidden weaknesses, and address them before actual adversaries do.
In this guide, you’ll learn the fundamentals of red teaming for offensive security, as well as best practices for integrating OffSec red teaming into your long-term security strategies.
Red team offensive security is a specialized type of OffSec where ethical hackers replicate the real tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by malicious attackers.
Rather than reacting to threats, red teamers go on the offensive, simulating attacks to test how well an organization can detect, respond to, and recover from a breach.
Red teaming is the gold standard for offensive security because its goal isn’t just to find vulnerabilities, but to exploit them in a stealthy, realistic way that mirrors the behavior of actual hackers. This differs from penetration testing, which typically has a narrower scope, focusing on individual systems or applications.
Red teaming conducts goal-oriented assessments over a longer time frame, using covert methods to avoid detection and see how deeply an attacker could penetrate the target system.
Ultimately, this method requires more time and expertise. Still, it enables organizations to gain a more comprehensive understanding of weaknesses that traditional methods, such as scanning and penetration testing, may miss.
Red team offensive security is an effective exercise for addressing security gaps. However, organizations must still follow the right processes and use proven tools to enjoy all of the benefits of red team OffSec.
Follow these expert best practices to improve your return on investment in red teaming.
Defining a clear goal and scope ensures that the exercise remains aligned with business objectives, is conducted ethically, and delivers actionable insights. Without this step, red team efforts can be too broad, unfocused, or even disruptive to operations.
Set boundaries around scope, acceptable tools, timing, and emergency protocols with a rules of engagement (RoE) document. This documentation will help you avoid production outages or legal issues.
Effective red team operations don’t reinvent the wheel; they model real-world threats using proven attack frameworks that mimic how actual adversaries operate.
These frameworks offer a structured and repeatable approach to designing, executing, and analyzing red team activities.
One of the most widely used frameworks is the MITRE ATT&CK Framework, which catalogs the TTPs used by threat actors at every stage of an attack.
By aligning your red team engagement with ATT&CK, you ensure that your simulated attacks are grounded in reality and tailored to the types of threats your organization is most likely to face.
Other frameworks, such as Cyber Kill Chain and NIST SP 800-115, are also helpful for red team offensive security.
Red teaming is a high-stakes endeavor—one that requires deep expertise, advanced tooling, and the ability to operate covertly without disrupting operations. That’s why many organizations choose to partner with a trusted platform or vendor to execute or support red team engagements.
The right solution gives you access to specialized skills, advanced offensive security tools, and real-world experience that helps you quickly identify blind spots.
For example, platforms like Mindgard specialize in offensive security for AI systems and LLMs, which is an increasingly critical need as more organizations adopt machine learning into their core infrastructure.
Mindgard’s advanced testing environment can simulate complex attacks against AI models and reveal vulnerabilities that traditional red teams may miss entirely.
Red team offensive security is a proactive and strategic approach to staying ahead of real-world attackers. By simulating sophisticated attacks, identifying blind spots, and stress-testing your defenses, red team OffSec reveals what your organization doesn’t know, and that knowledge is power.
Whether you're just beginning to build out your red teaming capabilities or looking to test the security of your AI and machine learning systems, the right partner makes all the difference.
Mindgard offers advanced offensive security solutions tailored for the age of AI, helping you expose hidden vulnerabilities, test your defenses against adversarial AI threats, and future-proof your cybersecurity strategy.
Safeguard your systems against next-gen attacks: Book a Mindgard demo now.
Typically, no. Most red team engagements use known vulnerabilities and attacker-like behaviors to simulate real-world threats. However, advanced teams may incorporate novel techniques or simulate zero-day conditions with more creative methods.
Yes, as long as the team conducts it under a strict Rules of Engagement (RoE) agreement. Experienced teams use stealthy, non-destructive methods and often coordinate with other teams to avoid disruptions or downtime.
Success is measured by whether the red team met its objectives undetected, how the blue team responded, and what insights were gained. The real win is improving detection, response, and resilience based on the findings.
