Red Team Operations & Adversary Simulation
Full-scope adversary simulation, evasion, and objective-driven breach testing
What this engagement covers
The service
Red team operations simulate sophisticated, real-world advanced persistent threats (APTs) and targeted cybercrime syndicates. Unlike conventional penetration testing scoped to a single system, our red team exercises target your entire organization—blending custom C2 malware, social engineering, perimeter exploitation, assumed breaches, and lateral movement to test your real-world detection, alerting, and incident response resilience.
What we test
We test the holistic security posture of your organization: external internet assets, human defenders and employees (spear phishing, OAuth device code attacks), perimeter defenses, endpoint detection and response (EDR/XDR) evasion, Active Directory and cloud identity environments, physical facility controls (optional), and Security Operations Center (SOC) Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR).
Scoping & Assessment Depth
Objective-Driven Adversary Emulation
Full CovertCompletely blind, covert operation where your defenders (SOC/Blue team) have no prior warning. Operators deploy custom C2, spear phishing, and perimeter exploitation to achieve specific crowns-jewel objectives.
Assumed Breach Operation
High ROIBypasses perimeter lottery by granting operators an initial low-privilege internal foothold (simulating a phished laptop or compromised third-party vendor), maximizing focus on lateral movement, EDR evasion, and exfiltration.
Purple Team Hybrid Exercise
CollaborativeRed and Blue teams sit side-by-side in real time. Offensive techniques are executed sequentially while defensive analysts inspect telemetry, fine-tune alert thresholds, and engineer custom detection rules immediately.
Attack Surface & Vulnerability Vectors
Targeted Initial Access & Phishing
Multi-stage spear phishing campaigns, AitM reverse proxy credential harvesting, device code flow abuse, and external perimeter service exploitation.
Custom C2 & EDR Evasion
Bypassing modern EDR solutions (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Defender for Endpoint) using indirect syscalls, memory obfuscation, AMSI/ETW unhooking, and malleable HTTP/DNS C2 profiles.
Living off the Land (LotL / LOLBins)
Executing malicious operations using legitimate, signed operating system binaries (certutil, bitsadmin, mshta, PowerShell) to avoid signature-based alerting.
Lateral Movement & Identity Pivot
Pivoting across network enclaves using Kerberos delegation abuse, Pass-the-Hash, token manipulation, internal reverse tunnels, and cloud-to-ground identity jumps.
Covert Data Staging & Exfiltration
Compressing, encrypting, and staging target data followed by slow-drip exfiltration over legitimate cloud storage, DNS tunneling, or encrypted outbound web sockets.
SOC Telemetry & Alert Validation
Testing whether defensive telemetry feeds into the SIEM, evaluating alert prioritization, and measuring SOC analyst response efficacy against real attacker tradecraft.
How we run it
Operating covertly against pre-agreed "crown jewel" objectives (such as accessing production customer databases, simulating ransomware deployment, or exfiltrating IP), our operators deploy custom malleable C2 infrastructure and Living off the Land (LotL) techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. We coordinate via an out-of-band "White Cell" to maintain strict safety and prevent operational downtime.
Target Reconnaissance, OSINT & White Cell Scoping
Gathering employee intelligence, domain infrastructure, cloud footprints, and establishing deconfliction communications with designated client liaisons.
C2 Infrastructure Weaponization & Delivery
Spinning up disposable cloud redirectors, configuring domain fronting, developing custom evasive payloads, and launching targeted access campaigns.
Foothold Establishment & EDR Suppression
Executing initial payloads on victim endpoints, disabling local telemetry where feasible, establishing persistent beacons, and enumerating host defenses.
Internal Pivoting & Enterprise Privilege Escalation
Harvesting credentials from LSASS and credential vaults, querying Active Directory / Entra ID, and moving laterally toward target data repositories.
Objective Execution & Mock Data Exfiltration
Reaching crown jewel databases, proving administrative control over critical infrastructure, and demonstrating controlled data exfiltration.
Debrief, Telemetry Replay & Purple Team Workshop
Reviewing every second of the engagement alongside your defenders, correlating SIEM timestamps, and helping engineers write high-fidelity detection rules.
What you receive
Findings land in your tracker as you go, not only in a PDF at the end. Retest is in scope, not a change order.
- Executive threat narrative and C-suite operational debrief
- Full chronological attack chain timeline with video evidence
- MITRE ATT&CK enterprise heat map showing tested techniques
- Blue team detection and telemetry gap analysis report
- SOC response evaluation (MTTD / MTTR metrics)
- Living off the Land (LotL) and EDR bypass breakdown
- Collaborative Purple Team debrief and remediation workshop
- Strategic defensive engineering and SIEM/EDR detection rules
What we usually find
The issues this engagement surfaces most often. Yours will differ, but this is the shape of it.
Who this is for
Auditor-Ready Compliance Crosswalk
| Framework | Control Section | Testing Evidence & Report Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| MITRE ATT&CK Framework | Enterprise Tactics TA0001 - TA0040 | Direct mapping of all executed offensive techniques across initial access, execution, defense evasion, lateral movement, and exfiltration. |
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | CA-8 (Penetration Testing) & IR-3 | Independent adversary simulation evaluating organization-wide incident response capabilities and system resilience. |
| EU DORA & CBEST / TIBER | Threat-Led Penetration Testing (TLPT) | Fulfills rigorous regulatory requirements for cyber resilience and threat-led red team engagements for critical financial entities. |
| SOC 2 Type II | CC7.2, CC7.3, CC7.4 | Empirical validation of continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, incident alerting, and rapid containment controls. |
Findings are mapped to NIST 800-53, MITRE ATT&CK, ISO 27001, Frameworks Alignment, so the report drops into an audit package rather than needing to be translated first. If you need the readiness work behind one of those, that is a separate engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
Direct answers on scoping, methodology, compliance validation, and deliverables.
A penetration test aims to identify and list as many vulnerabilities as possible across a specific target (such as a web application or network range). In contrast, a Red Team operation is an objective-driven adversary simulation: we mimic a determined threat actor targeting a specific crown jewel (e.g., customer financial data or domain dominance), testing not just your software vulnerabilities, but your defensive people, processes, and detection tools.
In a covert red team engagement, no. Only a pre-designated "White Cell" (typically the CISO, Head of Security, or VP of Engineering) knows the operation is underway. This ensures authentic measurement of your SOC's real-time detection, alerting, and incident response procedures.
Safety is paramount. All red team operations are governed by agreed Rules of Engagement and monitored via an out-of-band communication channel with your White Cell. We do not use destructive malware (wiper/ransomware) or denial-of-service payloads. If your team suspects an ongoing real-world incident, a single code-word immediately halts all activity.
In an assumed breach exercise, we skip external phishing or edge-scanning by granting the red team a low-privilege starting point (e.g., standard laptop credentials or an internal network tap). This saves weeks of external perimeter guessing and focuses 100% of the operational budget on what matters most: whether an attacker can move laterally, evade your EDR, and steal sensitive data once inside.
We include a collaborative Purple Team debrief. We review our minute-by-minute timeline alongside your SOC analysts and EDR/SIEM logs, identifying why specific alerts did or did not trigger, and providing custom Sigma, YARA, and EDR detection queries to close telemetry gaps permanently.
Scope it in one call
Tell us what is in scope and we come back with a fixed price and a start date. No discovery-call maze, no hourly estimate that moves.
