Establish the Right Objectives

The first step in preparing for red teaming is to define your objective. Unlike penetration testing, red teaming is goal oriented. Common objectives include tasking the red team to: 

• Access sensitive customer or financial data 
• Achieve persistence in a cloud environment 
• Simulate a ransomware attack across critical systems 
• Test response capabilities to lateral movement or data exfiltration 

Red team objectives are most effective when they are aligned to business priorities and real-world risk. Security leaders should select scenarios that challenge assumptions and test controls under pressure, while simulating the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of credible threat actors.

Align on Scope and Constraints

Once you have set clear objectives, you’re ready to define the scope of the engagement. Security teams should consider: 

• In-scope systems, users, and environments (e.g., cloud, physical, hybrid) 
• Controls or domains excluded for regulatory or operational reasons 
• Constraints on items such as testing hours or level of system disruption 

An effective engagement balances realism with safety. Clear rules of engagement prevent operational disruption while allowing adversary simulation to proceed authentically.

Assess Readiness for Red Teaming

Red teaming requires a minimum level of detection and response maturity to yield meaningful results. Organizations are typically ready for red teaming if they have: 

• A functioning SOC or MSSP with logging and alerting infrastructure 
• Regular vulnerability and patch management practices 
• An incident response plan with defined playbooks 
• Prior experience with penetration testing or tabletop simulations 

If these foundational elements are not in place, starting with penetration testing or detection engineering may be more effective.

Select the Right Red Team Partner

For organizations without an internal red team, third-party partnerships provide access to experienced operators. Here are some key criteria to look for when evaluating red team vendors: 

• Experience with tailored threat scenarios relevant to your organization’s industry 
• Ability to perform both external and assumed-breach operations 
• Strong reporting practices, including full attack narratives and remediation guidance 
• Secure handling of customer data and operations 
• Support for purple teaming and post-engagement debriefs

It’s best to avoid commoditized or off-the-shelf red team services; effective engagements are scenario-specific and threat-informed. .

Prepare Internal Stakeholders

Red teaming affects teams across the organization, not just security. Before the engagement begins, communicate with: 

• IT operations and infrastructure teams to coordinate access or potential testing constraints 
• Legal and compliance teams to define acceptable testing methods and incident handling 
• Executive leadership to establish goals and desired outcomes 

For some scenarios, such as ransomware simulations, tabletop exercises or executive walk-throughs may be incorporated to enhance organizational learning.

Begin with Architecture & Attack Graphing

Leading red team programs begin with collaborative threat modeling. This includes:

• Mapping business-critical systems, data flows, and potential attacker pathways
• Identifying weak points in users, visibility, access, and processes
• Visualizing how specific threats would traverse the environment

This exercise enables red teams to design realistic attack chains and helps security leaders understand not just where attacks could succeed, but why.

Use Findings to Build a Roadmap

The outcome of a red team engagement is not just a report; it’s a roadmap for improvement. The findings are often used to:

• Improve detection logic and SIEM visibility
• Update incident response playbooks
• Prioritize architecture changes or control tuning
• Drive future red team or purple team engagements focused on new scenarios

Findings should be tracked and retested in future engagements to establish measurable security maturity over time.

Consider a Programmatic Approach

Red teaming is most effective when done on an ongoing basis. Here is what a strategic red teaming program might look like:

• Quarterly or semi-annual red team scenarios across different threat vectors
• Purple teaming to accelerate blue team maturity
• Tabletop exercises aligned to operational risks and executive concerns

A long-term strategy will ensure that the organization continues to evolve with the threat landscape and will provide repeatable validation of control effectiveness.

Conclusion

Getting started with red teaming requires a great deal of upfront planning and internal alignment to ensure that you get the most out of the engagement. It is the gold standard in testing your defenses against threat actor profiles that are most likely to target your organization. The first red team engagement is more than a one-off pressure test; it becomes the foundation for operational clarity and measurable resilience.

Check out these resources for additional information on effective red teaming:

• Guide: Getting Red Teaming Right: A How-To Guide

• Virtual Session: Red Teaming: Is Your Security Program Ready for the Ultimate Test?

• Blog Post: 9 Red Team Tools for a Successful Red Team Engagement