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Red Team Engagements

A Red Team Engagement is a goal-driven, adversary-emulation assessment designed to measure an organization’s ability to detect, respond to, and contain real-world attacks. Unlike traditional penetration tests, red team engagements prioritize stealth, realism, and impact over comprehensive vulnerability coverage.

These engagements simulate motivated threat actors operating against your environment under controlled and agreed-upon rules of engagement.

Engagement Philosophy​

Red team operations are not vulnerability hunts. They are designed to answer questions such as:

  • Can an attacker gain a foothold without being detected?
  • How far can they move within the environment?
  • Can they reach defined high-value objectives?
  • How effectively can the organization detect and respond?

Success is measured by outcomes, not by the number of findings.

Scope and Objectives​

Each red team engagement is built around clearly defined objectives, which may include:

  • Domain compromise
  • Access to sensitive data
  • Privilege escalation to specific roles
  • Bypassing security controls or detection mechanisms
  • Testing incident detection and response workflows

Scope, constraints, and rules of engagement are agreed upon in advance to ensure safety and clarity.

Attack Simulation​

CyberSanctus red team engagements may include, where permitted:

  • Initial access via external attack vectors
  • Credential harvesting and reuse
  • Active Directory abuse and lateral movement
  • Living-off-the-land techniques
  • Evasion of endpoint and network defenses
  • Long-lived, low-noise attack paths

We adapt techniques dynamically based on environmental defenses and detection capabilities.

Collaboration with Blue Teams​

Red team engagements can be conducted as:

  • Blind (no defensive team awareness)
  • Semi-blind (limited awareness)
  • Collaborative (purple team style)

Where appropriate, we work closely with internal security teams to provide insight into detection gaps, logging coverage, and response effectiveness.

Deliverables​

Red team engagements include a comprehensive post-engagement report focused on outcomes and defensive impact.

Clients receive:

  • A narrative-based attack timeline
  • Clear documentation of objectives achieved
  • Identification of detection and response gaps
  • Risk analysis tied to real adversary behavior
  • Strategic and tactical remediation recommendations

Optional Debriefing​

A detailed debriefing session is strongly recommended and can be conducted with:

  • Executive stakeholders
  • Security leadership
  • Blue and SOC teams

This session walks through the attack chain step-by-step and provides actionable guidance for improving defensive maturity.

When to Choose a Red Team Engagement​

Red team engagements are best suited for organizations that:

  • Already perform regular penetration testing
  • Want to evaluate detection and response capabilities
  • Need realistic, high-impact attack simulations
  • Are preparing for advanced threat scenarios or compliance-driven exercises

CyberSanctus red team engagements provide clarity on how real attackers operate — and how well your defenses hold up under pressure.