What is purple teaming?

Let's understand what purple teaming is and how it is tied to red team operations.

Mar 18, 2025

Purple teaming is a security strategy that brings together the red team (attackers) and the blue team (defenders) to work in a structured and cooperative manner. Instead of functioning as separate, isolated teams, they collaborate to identify vulnerabilities, test detection mechanisms, and improve incident response. The goal of purple teaming is not just to simulate attacks but to actively enhance defensive measures based on real-world tactics. It fosters a continuous learning cycle.

How is Purple Teaming Tied to Red Teaming?

Red teaming focuses on simulating real-world cyber threats to test an organization’s ability to detect and respond to attacks. It operates under the assumption that attackers will eventually bypass security controls, forcing defenders to improve their detection and response capabilities.

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Purple teaming enhances red teaming by ensuring that the insights gained from an attack simulation are immediately shared, analyzed, and applied to improve defenses. Instead of treating offensive and defensive security as two separate processes, purple teaming aligns them. The red team’s attack strategies directly feed into blue team improvements, creating an efficient security feedback loop.

Red Team vs. Purple Team Exercise

Let’s consider a real-world example of an organization conducting a security assessment in two phases: one with a red team exercise and another with a purple team approach.

Red Team Exercise

A financial institution hires a red team to simulate a cyber attack. The red team successfully bypasses multiple security controls, gains administrator access, and extracts sensitive financial data. After the engagement, they provide a detailed report outlining the attack paths and security weaknesses. However, without direct involvement in remediation, the blue team struggles to interpret the findings and apply fixes effectively.

Purple Team Exercise

In a second phase, the same organization implements a purple team approach. The red team repeats its attack tactics but works alongside the blue team. Every attack step is analyzed in real-time, allowing defenders to tweak their SIEM alerts, endpoint detection rules, and network defenses. By the end of the engagement, the blue team has not only understood how the attacks work but has also actively improved their security posture.

Why Purple Teaming is the Future

Red teaming remains essential for testing real-world attack scenarios, but without a strong defensive improvement strategy, its impact is limited. Purple teaming ensures that attack simulations lead to immediate, actionable security improvements, making organizations more resilient to evolving threats. In essence, red teaming tests an organization’s ability to survive an attack, while purple teaming focuses on learning and improving defenses in real-time based on the red team’s findings.

Red Team Notes
Purple teaming is when attackers (red team) and defenders (blue team) work together to improve security. Instead of just testing defenses like red teaming, purple teaming helps identify and fix weak spots as attacks happen.