Cyber threats are becoming more common, advanced, and expensive. Globally, the cost of a data breach reached an all-time high in 2024, costing businesses an average of $4.88 million—10% increase over 2023.
In addition, more than one-third (36%) of businesses experienced a data breach exceeding $1 million in the past year, an increase from 27% in 2023. It’s clear that organizations need more advanced means of staying one step ahead of cyber criminals.
That’s where red teaming comes in. Unlike traditional cybersecurity testing, red teaming focuses on thinking like an adversary—whether that means launching a sophisticated cyberattack, attempting a physical breach, or exploiting human vulnerabilities through social engineering. A Forrester report found that red teaming not only reduces the number of security incidents by 25% but also lowers the cost of incidents that do occur by 35%.
Dark Reading reports that 68% of organizations in one survey agree that red team exercises are more effective than blue team exercises, and it’s also a more popular approach. According to the report, 72% of respondents conduct red teaming exercises—23% perform red teaming monthly, 17% quarterly, and 15% biannually.
While it’s a highly effective offensive security strategy, businesses that don’t follow a defined framework risk overlooking critical aspects of red teaming that could leave security issues unidentified.
Before implementing red teaming, your business needs a solid plan and the right approach. In this guide, we’ll explain how red teaming checklists improve testing outcomes and share critical items to include in your own red team checklist.
We’ll also share common red teaming mistakes that a checklist can help you avoid.
Red teaming is a helpful tool that challenges assumptions about security and encourages out-of-the-box thinking, but it still requires structure to be successful. A red teaming checklist is the guide organizations follow to achieve this.
A red teaming checklist includes several elements, including:
Since red teaming can vary drastically in scope from one organization to another, it’s crucial to document this unique process before beginning an exercise.
While red teaming exercises should evolve to keep up with the latest threats, establishing a red teaming checklist will ensure your team covers all the bases before kicking off each test.
This approach ensures consistency and provides red team members with the necessary support and guidelines to do an effective job.
While it’s possible to conduct a red team exercise without a checklist, it’s more likely that your team will miss a crucial step of the testing process. It can take some time to create a checklist before the exercise begins, but it’s a worthwhile investment. Using a red teaming checklist offers:
Organizations should customize their red teaming checklist to the nuances of testing in their own environments. However, at a minimum, the checklist should include the following four elements.
The development section of your red teaming checklist should detail the high-level strategy and plan for the exercise. This section focuses largely on team members, skills, and responsibilities.
A typical red team may include various roles with different skillsets. The table below shows the common red team roles, their responsibilities, and the key skills required.
First, assess whether your team has the knowledge to conduct the exercise. If not, you may need a third-party consultant or a contractor to fill in the gaps.
Once you have the appropriate expertise, decide who does what by documenting roles and responsibilities. This section of the red teaming checklist defines who the red team members are as well as the roles of the blue team and purple team, if you have them.
It should also document who the stakeholders are, such as non-technical managers, who should receive the report at the end of the red teaming exercise.
The development section should also provide the red team with technical guidance, including:
At this stage, creating templates for later stages of the process is also helpful. While templates may change over time, you can reuse them for multiple red teaming exercises.
Consider creating templates for RoE, technical briefings, reports, and other documents to reduce administrative burdens during testing.
The planning stage focuses heavily on defining the rules of engagement. This crucial part of the red teaming checklist creates guardrails for the red team while protecting the business from unintended consequences.
Your RoE should include:
It’s crucial to include non-technical stakeholders while developing the RoE. For example, the sales manager may not understand the nuances of stress-testing your organization’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool, but they can specify which areas shouldn’t be tested and explain the reasons why.
After developing the RoE, the red team starts scenario development. This section of your red teaming checklist should provide technical guidance for planning the threat simulation, including:
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Cyber threats change over time, and this section of the red teaming checklist will need to be updated as your team learns more about evolving threats.
Scenario development will also differ heavily depending on the target system. Allow red teamers the flexibility to think beyond this section of the checklist—as long as it doesn’t violate the RoE—to ensure a thorough test that mimics real-world conditions.
During the execution phase, the red team acts on research from the planning phase. It tests multiple scenarios, including insider threats, physical breaches, and common cyber attacks.
The team captures logs, screenshots, and any system changes in real-time as a result of the actions taken during the simulation. This approach makes it much easier to generate helpful reports after the exercise.
The red team will also meet at predetermined intervals (such as twice daily) to share their findings and techniques. Since real-world hackers often share information with each other, this meeting will allow red teamers to think more creatively and ensure a realistic, advanced threat scenario.
This part of the red teaming checklist requires generating a report about the team’s findings and developing a plan to mitigate security gaps.
First, the red team meets internally to review their findings. Once they generate a report (using the templates created in the development stage), they share the findings with other stakeholders, including non-technical team members. This report details the vulnerabilities discovered, the effectiveness of the organization’s existing response plan, and suggestions for improvement.
All stakeholders should then meet to review this report and discuss what went well, what failed, and how the organization can improve. At this point, the business must develop a plan to implement the red team’s findings; otherwise, it risks falling victim to advanced cyber threats.
The checklist might also require bringing in blue or purple team members, who will hold the organization accountable for rolling out these much-needed changes.
Red teaming is not a one-and-done activity—it’s an iterative process that requires continuous refinement to remain effective. Cyber threats are always evolving, and your red teaming strategy should, too.
A structured approach to feedback ensures that red teaming insights translate into actionable improvements. Consider integrating the following elements into your red teaming checklist:
As new threats emerge, organizations must revisit and refine their red teaming checklists. This includes:
Red teaming can be incredibly effective, but the right approach is necessary to identify and fix critical blind spots. A structured red teaming checklist will help you avoid most mistakes, but common missteps could cost your organization dearly.
What follows are some of the most common red teaming errors and how to solve them.
Red teaming checklists often focus on critical infrastructure, but many organizations forget to test other digital assets.
For example, more companies rely on large language models (LLMs), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), but these solutions can be far from secure on their own. Experts predict that 30% of APIs will be developed using AI tools by 2026, making it crucial for organizations to stress-test their AI models just as much as the rest of their infrastructure.
Ensure your red teaming checklist addresses all aspects of cyber security, including AI models. This approach requires additional expertise in AI, so choose a provider like Mindgard to conduct specialized, automated red teaming to keep your AI models ethical and safe.
Many red teams focus on testing a system's technical weaknesses. However, human error is the most common reason for cyber breaches—SHRM estimates it causes as many as 52% of all attacks.
Your red teaming checklist should focus heavily on human-focused attacks, such as phishing emails or impersonation, to assess how well your non-IT team understands cyber threats.
The goal of red teaming is to simulate your organization’s response to real-world attacks, but if the red team exercise isn’t realistic, it won’t give you a good idea of your readiness for malicious attacks.
Overly simple or easy exercises could lull you into a false sense of security, and your checklist should be flexible enough for red teamers to mimic the latest threats.
Consider adding a task to your red teaming checklist for regular training so your red team stays on the cutting edge of cyber threats.
Explaining red teaming concepts to non-technical staff can be challenging, but it’s essential to protecting your organization. These users and leaders have access to organizational systems but often don’t understand the nuances of advanced attacks—this makes them a prime target for malicious hackers.
Plus, non-technical users have valuable insights into these systems that should affect how your red team proceeds. Always give non-technical leaders a seat at the table, especially if you’re red teaming one of their critical systems.
The purpose of red teaming is to identify and fix weaknesses. The exercise is pointless if your team goes to the trouble of red teaming and the organization doesn’t fix these issues. While it might not be possible to implement all of the red team’s suggestions immediately, organizations can still address weaknesses based on their severity or priority.
If your business struggles to implement the red team’s recommendations, consider hiring a blue team specializing in defensive methods. This team will not only be responsible for mitigating threats but also give the red team something to test against in future exercises.
Red teaming is a powerful tool for identifying vulnerabilities and improving organizational resilience, but its success depends on thoughtful execution. The key is to treat red teaming as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event.
When done right, red teaming strengthens your defenses, improves response times, and fosters a proactive culture of continuous improvement. Keep updating your red teaming checklist, involve cross-functional teams, and adapt to the latest threats.
Tap Mindgard to bring additional expertise to your red teaming exercises. Our AI red teaming experts know how to stress-test AI models and secure them against increasingly advanced AI-driven attacks. Book a Mindgard demo now to simplify AI compliance with human expertise.
Advanced red teaming is more persistent and sophisticated. It involves advanced threat modeling, real-world tactics, and multi-vector approaches, such as combining cyberattacks, physical security breaches, and social engineering tactics. Zero-day exploits and custom attack simulations are also popular.
The goal is to mimic advanced persistent threats (APTs) that a well-resourced adversary might use to infiltrate an organization. Continuous automated red teaming (CART) tests systems continuously to help your organization stay ahead of emerging threats.
Both red teaming and threat-led penetration testing measure an organization’s security, but in different ways. TLPT is more structured and provides specific threat intelligence.
Red teaming, on the other hand, is a broader and more persistent strategy that simulates real-world attacks over a longer period of time. It assesses not just security systems but also decision-making processes and team responses.
A white card in red teaming will pause the exercise. It’s primarily used to intervene if there’s a safety or operational issue with the test. For example, if a red team exercise is causing unintended disruption to real-world operations, the white card will stop the exercise.
It ensures the simulation doesn’t cause significant business impact or breach any critical boundaries set during the planning phase.
