Purple Teaming Part 1: The Key to Better Cybersecurity Testing

Security testing is one of the best ways to ensure that your defenses can handle whatever is coming next. That’s why you can’t afford to treat cybersecurity testing as just a one-and-done checkbox. That said, not all penetration tests are created equal. Traditional penetration tests often reveal weak spots in your defenses. But do they truly prepare your team to detect, respond to, and defeat real-world attackers in real time? In this two-part blog series, we will introduce the concept of purple teaming and discuss how the practice improves testing to keep you ahead of threats.

The Problem with Standard Penetration Tests

Most organizations rely on periodic penetration testing to test security measures. By using red teams to execute offensive techniques, tactics, and protocols (TTPs), and blue teams to monitor, detect, and respond to those simulated attacks, teams can uncover gaps before attackers find them. While valuable, these point-in-time tests often fall short. They highlight weaknesses, but they often work in siloed environments, separating red teams and blue teams. Additionally, they often focus on specific functional areas (i.e., external testing, internal testing, single system focus, etc.), which can miss big-picture insights. 

Enter the Purple Team

Purple teaming uses comprehensive frameworks and combines the offensive insights of the red team with the defensive vigilance of the blue team. Instead of working in isolation, a purple team emphasizes collaboration. It turns testing into an interactive exercise that continuously strengthens an organization’s detection and response capabilities.

Best Practices for Effective Purple Teaming

Successful purple teaming relies on three proven practices:

The Use of Frameworks

A purple team rarely starts their engagement from scratch. Instead, they rely on standardized and proven cybersecurity frameworks like The Cyber Kill Chain or MITRE ATT&CK. These frameworks, which are kept up-to-date by their creators, reflect real-world threats and provide a tested, shared blueprint for how attackers think and act. This helps the purple team:

• Design realistic scenarios faster
• Ensure comprehensive coverage across the attack lifecycle
• Speak a common language with defenders and leadership
• Benchmark detection and response against industry standards

Setting Goals and Objectives

For a purple team engagement to deliver real value, it’s crucial to set clear goals and specific objectives from the start. Goals define the big-picture outcome you want to achieve, like improving ransomware detection or reducing response times. Objectives break that down into concrete, measurable steps that guide what gets tested and how success is determined. Without this structure, tests can become unfocused, and valuable lessons may be missed. Well-defined goals and objectives keep everyone aligned and ensure the results directly strengthen your organization’s security posture.

Monitoring and Acting on Alerts

A key part of purple teaming is making sure your defenses don’t just detect threats, but that they also trigger the right alerts and prompt swift action. During testing, defenders monitor live activity to see if security tools catch the simulated attacks as expected. Just as important, they practice investigating alerts and taking the right steps to contain threats. This hands-on approach helps fine-tune alert rules, reduce false positives, and build muscle memory so your team can respond confidently when a real incident occurs.

How Purple Teaming Drives Improvement

During an exercise, the purple team orchestrates attacks, and works side-by-side with defenders to refine detections in real time. Then, the team documents what worked and what didn’t. Afterward, they provide detailed reports outlining gaps, recommended fixes, and creating actionable playbooks to boost security maturity and improve real-time response.

Learn More about Purple Teaming

By merging the offensive mindset with defensive readiness, purple teams help organizations shift from reactive testing to proactive resilience. In our next post, we’ll break down the entire purple team lifecycle from planning to remediation, and we’ll share practical steps to make your own purple team engagements successful.

Stay tuned!

We’ll explore more about purple teaming in the second part of this two-part blog series soon.

Until then, you can download our whitepaper, From Compliance to Resilience: The Case for Purple Teaming, for deeper insights and understanding.

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