Red Team Assessment

What the engagement covers

Objective-based simulation testing detection and response across systems, processes, and personnel.

• Objectives

  Each exercise is built around outcomes that would matter to the business, agreed with you in advance: reaching a specific system, data set, or level of control rather than enumerating vulnerabilities.

• Initial access

  The routes available into the environment, which may include internet-facing services, exposed credentials, or social engineering where it is placed in scope.

• Detection coverage

  Which actions generated telemetry, which generated an alert, and which passed unnoticed, each recorded against the point in the exercise at which it occurred.

• Response capability

  What your team did once an alert fired, how long triage took, and whether the response contained the activity or lost track of it.

• Process and personnel

  The procedures and decisions around the technology: escalation paths, on-call handover, and the judgement calls made under time pressure.

What you receive

Written so findings can be assigned directly to the teams that will act on them.

• Exercise narrative

  The full timeline of the exercise, from initial access to each objective reached, with the technique used at every step and the evidence captured.

• Detection and response assessment

  Each action matched against what your tooling recorded and what your team saw, showing where telemetry was missing, where an alert did not fire, and where one fired but was not actioned.

• Prioritised improvement plan

  The detection and response gaps the exercise exposed, ordered by the coverage each fix adds rather than by the severity of the technique that exposed it.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a red team assessment take?

A red team assessment is objective-based rather than fixed-length, and most engagements run between three and six weeks depending on scope, the number of objectives, and the size of the environment. The exact duration is agreed at scoping and documented in the statement of work before any testing begins.

What is the difference between a penetration test and a red team assessment?

A penetration test aims to find and document as many exploitable vulnerabilities as possible within a defined scope. A red team assessment is objective-based: it simulates a capable adversary pursuing specific goals against live defences, and measures detection and response across technology, process, and personnel rather than enumerating every flaw.

Does our security team know the exercise is happening?

Only a small, agreed group does. The teams whose detection and response is being measured are not told, because advance notice changes the behaviour the exercise exists to measure. Deconfliction contacts and stop conditions are agreed in writing beforehand, so activity can be paused or confirmed as authorised at any point.