In This Article
Red team operations are adversarial security exercises where ethical hackers simulate a real attacker against an organization's technology, people and processes. Red team operations follow five phases of engagement: planning and preparation, reconnaissance, attack simulation, reporting and remediation.
A red team operation is objective-based: the red team picks one adversary goal and reaches it by any permitted route, which tests detection and response rather than a list of known vulnerabilities.
Red team operations still find a way in. NIST found at least one successful attack against all 13 frontier models tested, across more than 250,000 attempts from over 400 red teamers.
Attack simulation is the part everyone pictures, but it is crucial to red teaming that the work around it is done properly. A red team operation without planning, rules of engagement and a reporting loop is not an exercise, it is an incident.
This guide walks all five phases, shows what the rules of engagement have to cover and explains what changes when the target is an AI system.
What are Red Team Operations?
A red team operation is an adversarial exercise where ethical hackers mimic real threat actors against your live systems. Microsoft’s AI Red Team, which has run red team operations against more than 100 generative AI products, notes that automation now covers part of the work. In cyber security, red teaming assesses the resilience of multiple systems and networks. Unlike a penetration test, a red team operation picks one adversary objective and reaches it by any permitted route.
Ultimately, red team operations help identify vulnerabilities, test defenses, and improve the organization's ability to prevent, detect and respond to cyber threats. Organizations often design unique red team operations for each exercise, but these components are standard in all red teams:
- Objective-based testing: Red team operations focus on specific objectives, such as gaining unauthorized access to sensitive data, disrupting services or testing incident response capabilities.
- Cross-disciplinary skills: Red teams are typically composed of professionals with expertise in cyber security, ethical hacking, penetration testing, physical security and social engineering.
- Thorough testing: unlike a penetration test, a red team operation evaluates technology, people and processes together.
Red Teaming vs Penetration Testing: What Actually Differs
The difference between red teaming and penetration testing is scope and objective.
A penetration test enumerates and exploits as many known vulnerabilities as possible inside a narrow, agreed scope. It answers one question: what is broken here?
A red team operation picks one adversary objective, such as exfiltrating a customer database, then reaches that objective by any permitted route across technology, people and processes. It answers a different question: would we detect and stop a real attacker?
Penetration tests are typically announced and measured in vulnerabilities found. Red team operations are typically unannounced and measured in detection and response performance.
The Role of Red Team Operations in Securing Generative AI Platforms
Generative AI platforms introduce unique security challenges, including adversarial attacks, model poisoning and data leakage. Red team operations help organizations evaluate the resilience of their AI systems against such threats by simulating real-world attack scenarios.
NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation ran the numbers with Gray Swan and the UK AI Security Institute:
"Across more than 250,000 attack attempts from over 400 participants, at least one successful attack was found against all of the target frontier models, highlighting the ongoing challenge that hijacking attacks pose for secure agent use."
- NIST Center for AI Standards and Innovation. Insights into AI Agent Security from a Large-Scale Red-Teaming Competition, March 2026.
Thirteen frontier models were tested. Every one of them fell to at least one attack, which is why red teaming an AI system is a recurring operation rather than a launch gate.
One of the primary roles of red team operations is to identify vulnerabilities in generative AI systems. As these platforms often rely on complex neural networks, it’s essential to conduct thorough assessments to discover potential flaws, such as:
- Data poisoning: Attackers may attempt to manipulate the training data to influence the model’s output.
- Model extraction: Adversaries might reverse-engineer the AI model to replicate its capabilities without authorization.
- Adversarial inputs: Inputs designed to deceive the AI can lead to harmful or inappropriate outputs.
5 Phases of Engagement in Red Team Operations
Red team exercises can accidentally disrupt operations without proper guardrails. That’s why it’s crucial for all red team operations to follow a structured methodology. These key phases allow red team operations to conduct realistic simulations without causing actual harm to the organization.
1. Planning and Preparation
The first phase focuses on defining the objectives of the red team engagement, defining the scope of work and allocating necessary resources.
- Defining your objectives: This involves collaboration between the red team and stakeholders to establish clear goals. Organizations might want to assess specific threats, test incident response capabilities or evaluate policies and procedures.
- Scoping: Before the simulation starts, every red team operation needs a defined scope. This phase brings together all stakeholders to agree on specific test goals. It also includes rules of engagement (ROE) that define what is and isn’t in the red team's scope.
- Allocating resources: Effective preparation requires proper resource allocation, including personnel, tools and time. The red team gathers necessary tools and teams up with other relevant departments to ensure a smooth operation.
What the Rules of Engagement Must Cover
The rules of engagement for a red team exercise should define, in writing and before any testing begins: the in-scope and out-of-scope systems, the permitted tactics, techniques and procedures, the testing window and time-of-day limits, the data handling and exfiltration rules, the named emergency stop contacts and the deconfliction process that tells the blue team a detected event is the red team.
Rules of engagement (RoE) are the contract that keeps a red team operation legal and non-disruptive. A red team operation without signed rules of engagement is not an exercise, it is an incident.
Is your red team engagement actually scoped?
Nine checks drawn from the planning and preparation phase. Answer them before an operator touches a keyboard.
0 / 9
Not ready to run
Tick the checks your rules of engagement already cover in writing. Anything left unticked is what a red team operation typically trips over.
How this is scored
Each check is worth one point, scored client-side in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. 0-4 = Not ready to run, 5-7 = Gaps to close, 8-9 = Ready to run. The nine checks are the authors' compilation of the planning-and-preparation inputs described on this page. They are a preparation aid, not a compliance standard or a substitute for legal sign-off.
2. Reconnaissance
At this stage, the red team conducts reconnaissance, collecting as much information about their target and identifying potential vulnerabilities.
- Gathering information: Once planning is complete, the red team enters the reconnaissance phase, where intelligence gathering is crucial. This involves an extensive search for information about the target, using both passive and active techniques. The goal is to identify potential vulnerabilities and entry points.
- Analyzing Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Red teams rely heavily on OSINT, which involves using OSINT tools (like ExifTool, Google Dorks) to analyze publicly available information like social media profiles, company websites and domain registries. The red team will also map the target’s infrastructure by identifying assets, including IP addresses, domains, networks and possible attack vectors.
3. Attack Simulation
With ample information at hand, red teams move to the attack simulation phase. This phase includes attacks like phishing campaigns, exploiting vulnerable apps and even overriding physical security measures.
Some organizational defenses will block the red team’s attack simulations, which is a good thing. However, red teams are creative and known for breaking through these defenses.
- Exploiting vulnerabilities: The red team uses its ethical hacking skills to gain unauthorized entry into the target systems. Unlike penetration testing, red team testing uses various methods to gain access to multiple systems, mimicking the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of real-world adversaries to understand how attackers could breach security.
- Lateral movement: Once initial access is gained, red teams often simulate lateral movement within the network, attempting to access further sensitive data or systems. This phase reveals how securely structured the network is and if current defenses are effective against internal threats.
Microsoft's AI Red Team, which has red teamed more than 100 generative AI products, puts the point bluntly:
"You don't have to compute gradients to break an AI system."
- Bullwinkel et al., Microsoft AI Red Team. Lessons From Red Teaming 100 Generative AI Products, arXiv, January 2025.
That is why attack simulation against an AI system leans on hand-crafted prompts and fuzzing before it reaches anything mathematically exotic.
4. Reporting
After the attack simulation is complete, the red team reports on its findings. The team often holds a debriefing with leaders to discuss the results and offer more details about suggested improvements.
- Documentation of findings: The red team prepares a detailed report that outlines every step taken, the vulnerabilities exploited and the implications of the findings. Since the purpose of red teaming is to improve an organization’s defenses, this report is crucial for helping stakeholders understand and prioritize system fixes.
- Recommendations: In addition to outlining vulnerabilities, the report should also include actionable recommendations for remediation. These suggestions range from technical solutions, such as patching software, to policy changes affecting organizational culture.
How Red Teams Document an Engagement Repeatably
Red teams document engagements in a repeatable way by recording every action against a shared attack framework as the operation runs, not after it ends.
A standard red team operation log captures the timestamp, the operator, the target asset, the MITRE ATT&CK technique ID, the command issued, the observed result and whether the blue team detected it.
This operator log becomes the evidence base for the final report and lets a defender replay the attack path step by step. MITRE ATT&CK gives red teams a common technique taxonomy so that two engagements six months apart are directly comparable.
5. Remediation and Follow-up
The final stage of the red team operation is remediation and follow-up.
- Mitigation strategies: Companies implement the recommended changes to strengthen security. This may require stakeholders to prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity and potential impact, allocating resources to address the most critical areas first.
- Continuous improvement: Engagement doesn’t end with reporting. Follow-up is vital for ensuring that organizations adopt a culture of continuous improvement. This could involve conducting training sessions, enhancing monitoring capabilities or planning subsequent red team engagements to test any changes made.
Running Multiple Red Team Engagements Across Clients
Managing multiple red team engagements across clients requires a per-client separation of rules of engagement, infrastructure and evidence.
Each engagement needs its own signed rules of engagement, its own dedicated command and control infrastructure so that one client's indicators never touch another's, its own evidence store and its own deconfliction contact list.
Red team leads typically stagger engagement phases across clients so that reconnaissance on one account overlaps with reporting on another, which keeps operator utilisation high without running two attack simulations at the same time.
Prepare for Future Threats with Mindgard
Red teams play a vital role in strengthening cyber security. However, they need structure and strong guardrails to prevent unintended business disruptions. Ensure your red team operations go through these five phases to stay ahead of evolving threats and build security frameworks you can actually re-test next quarter.
Ready to strengthen your organization’s defenses and outsmart potential threats? Partner with Mindgard for AI red teaming built on a decade of research at Lancaster University. Book a demo now to take the first step to a more secure infrastructure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are red team operations disruptive to everyday business?
With proper planning, red team operations are minimally disruptive. Rules of Engagement (RoE) define boundaries to ensure critical systems remain operational while providing valuable insights into potential vulnerabilities.
What types of threats can red team operations simulate?
Red team operations can simulate various threats to mimic adversaries, including phishing attacks, ransomware deployment, insider threats, physical breaches, data exfiltration and advanced persistent threats (APTs).
What is the typical duration of a red team operation?
A full-scope red team operation typically runs five to twelve weeks:
- Roughly one to two weeks of planning and preparation
- One to two weeks of reconnaissance
- Two to six weeks of attack simulation
- And one to two weeks of reporting
Remediation and follow-up sit outside that window. Longer engagements allow for deeper simulations, although it takes longer to report the findings.
What does red team vs blue team mean in cybersecurity?
Red team vs blue team is where the red team simulates attackers by probing systems to discover and exploit vulnerabilities (ethical hacking). Their objective is to mimic real-world threats and assess how well defenses hold up. Conversely, the blue team defends the organization by detecting, responding to and mitigating these simulated attacks. They focus on strengthening security posture, improving incident response and ensuring systems remain resilient against potential breaches.
What does red team vs purple team mean in cybersecurity?
In red team vs purple team, the red teams focus on offensive operations, simulating real attackers to test and exploit vulnerabilities. Purple teams, on the other hand, blend offensive (red team) and defensive (blue team) insights. Rather than functioning purely as attackers, purple teams collaborate closely with defenders to streamline knowledge sharing, improve detection capabilities and refine incident response practices in a continuous feedback loop.
