Your Pentest Checks the Locks. A Red Team Simulates the Entire Burglary.
For years, companies have tested their cyber defenses by asking their security partners a straightforward question: “Can you break in?” This approach, known as a penetration test, has become a routine part of corporate security, producing a valuable list of technical vulnerabilities that need to be fixed.
But as cyberattacks grow in sophistication, business leaders are asking a more telling and complex question: “Can you break in, steal our most valuable data, and get out without anyone on my team noticing?”
This is the fundamental difference between a standard penetration test and what is formally known as an Adversarial Attack Simulation Exercise (AASE), or Red Team engagement. The former tests for weaknesses in your technology; the latter tests the real-world resilience of your entire security program, including your people, processes, and technology, under the pressure of a simulated, full-scale attack.
Beyond the Vulnerability Scan: The Limits of Traditional Testing
A traditional penetration test, or VAPT, is an asset-based technical assessment with the primary objective to identify as many vulnerabilities as possible within a limited scope. It answers the question, “Are we vulnerable?”
An AASE, however, is an objective-based, open-scoped exercise designed to answer a more critical question: “Are we resilient?”. It does not just test a piece of technology in isolation; it challenges the organization's holistic capability to prevent, detect, and respond to a determined, real-world adversary. The exercise is often conducted covertly, with only a small "Exercise Working Group" aware of the simulation, to ensure the response from the defensive team is genuine.
Inside the Simulation: What Is an Adversarial Attack Simulation Exercise?
An AASE is a goal-oriented, adversarial simulation. Instead of just finding vulnerabilities, the Red Team is given a specific objective, just like a real adversary would have. This objective is a tangible business outcome, often targeting the organization's "Critical Functions." Examples of such goals include:
Gain access to the CEO’s email account.
Exfiltrate the intellectual property for a key project.
Demonstrate the ability to perform a large unauthorized funds transfer.
To achieve this goal, the Red Team simulates the same Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) as modern adversaries. This can include sophisticated phishing campaigns, chaining together minor vulnerabilities to create a major breach, and moving silently across the network to escalate privileges. The engagement is designed to be a true test of the entire security ecosystem at once.
The Technology: Are the firewalls, endpoint detection tools, and security alerts configured correctly and do they actually trigger?
The Processes: Does the internal security team (the "Blue Team") follow the incident response plan when an alert fires? Do they escalate the incident correctly?
The People: Can key employees be manipulated by a social engineering attempt? Does the security team have the skills to analyze the complex actions of the Red Team?
The True Measure of Resilience
The final deliverable from an AASE is not a simple list of software vulnerabilities. It is a strategic report that provides leadership with an unvarnished assessment of their organization's true defensive capabilities.
The Exercise Closure phase involves a comprehensive analysis, which may include a "Defence Report" from the organization's own team that reconciles their actions against the attacker's timeline. This provides clear, evidence-based answers to the questions that matter most:
How long did it take our team to detect the intrusion?
Did we successfully identify the attacker’s movements and contain the simulated breach?
Where, specifically, did our incident response plan fail under pressure?
The outcome is a strategic remediation plan that focuses on improving the organization's overall resilience. A penetration test checks the locks on your doors. An
AASE simulates a full-blown burglary to see if your alarm system, security guards, and emergency procedures actually work together to protect your most valuable assets.
AKATI Sekurity’s Red Team engagements are conducted in alignment with established industry best practices, such as the Adversarial Attack Simulation Exercise guidelines. We provide not just the attack simulation, but the crucial threat intelligence, strategic planning, and post-exercise analysis needed to deliver a true measure of your organization's resilience.
To understand the true resilience of your security program, contact AKATI Sekurity to discuss an Adversarial Attack Simulation Exercise.
