what is red teaming

Red teaming is a practice of rigorously challenging plans, policies, systems, and assumptions by adopting an adversarial approach. It involves a group that pretends to be an enemy and attempts a physical or digital intrusion against an organization at the direction of that organization, then reports back so that the organization can improve their defenses. The goal of red teaming is to overcome cognitive errors such as groupthink and confirmation bias, which can impair the decision-making or critical thinking ability of an individual or organization. Red teaming can be used to test and optimize physical security such as fences, cameras, alarms, locks, and employee behavior, as well as to compromise networks and computers digitally. Red teaming can also be used to simulate a multifaceted cyberattack where teams use several different tactics to attempt to access an organizations system. The information gathered from this examination is essential to formulating goals for the red team. Red teaming is a focused, goal-oriented security testing method that is designed to achieve specific objectives.