PlexTrac ConceptsPurple Team Cybersecurity

Wondering what is a purple team in cybersecurity? Rest assured that everything you need to know is encapsulated in this purple team cyber guide.
A Purple Team Overview: Purple team cybersecurity is a process where red (offensive) teams and blue (defensive) teams collaborate to strengthen defenses. They team up for real-time tests to optimize security measures across people, processes, and technology through purple team assessments.
The Importance of a Purple Team Exercise: Purple team exercises shatter silos, speed up incident response, and improve threat detection and remediation. Purple team testing has proven to help organizations more effectively detect and defend against ransomware and advanced threats than traditional red or blue team tests.
Benefits of Purple Team Security:
Purple team security provides multiple benefits, including:

• Improved collaboration and better threat detection and response
• Enhanced visibility between shared assets and security controls
• Quicker, more prioritized risk remediation
• Continuous validation of security tools and controls
• Greater understanding of the most recent threats
• More accurate metrics for benchmarking throughout the security lifecycle`

A purple team in cybersecurity refers to a group of offensive red team or penetration testing team members that collaborate with the defensive blue team to conduct concrete, point-in-time assessments. Unlike traditional red teaming, the methods of attack and defense in purple teaming are predetermined, meaning the red team typically explains the performed attacks to help the blue team identify whether their current security measures can prevent or detect the attack in real time.

Similarly, purple teaming in cybersecurity is the process of these blue and red teams working together to test, measure, and improve the defensive security posture by emulating attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

Effective purple teaming is truly a collaborative effort. According to a survey by the CyberRisk Alliance and PlexTrac, 88% of purple teaming users, compared to only 52% of red and blue team users, deemed their exercises as “very effective” in defending their organization against ransomware and advanced attacks. Sadly, red and blue teams are often battling to outsmart and outperform one another; however, purple teaming exercises prove that both are fighting the same external threats, regardless of which side they represent.

Note that purple teaming is not a job per se, and there aren’t usually dedicated cybersecurity purple team members. They are either part of the red or blue team. Still, everyone’s common mission under the purple umbrella is to detect threats as early as possible and reduce risks faster.

Looking to foster purple teaming collaboration in your organization? PlexTrac is a purple teaming platform that helps cybersecurity teams of all sizes consolidate data, communicate better, and reduce risk faster.

What are you waiting for? Close the loop on continuous validation and request a demo today.

As mentioned, purple teaming is the collaborative function performed by red and blue teams to mitigate risks and vulnerabilities by strategically combining their efforts. Through testing and remediation, purple teams break down barriers, improve communication, and reinforce each team’s skills.

Additionally, setting aside the competitive nature between these two groups has proven to reduce the mean time to detect and remediate, and helps organizations operate more efficiently.

Some core functions of purple teaming include:

• Simulating real-world attacks to test defenses.
• Improving threat detection capabilities by analyzing attackers’ methods.
• Gathering intelligence from both offensive and defensive activities.
• Speeding up incident response through blue and red team efforts.
• Fostering communication between teams to share skills and knowledge.
• Identifying weaknesses and taking corrective actions based on exercise intel and discoveries.

To learn more about the functions of purple teaming, check out our blog on The 5 Activities of a Purple Teaming Engagement.

Aside from what was discussed above, purple teaming has multiple benefits, such as the following.

1. Improved Collaboration & Better Threat Detection and Response

Purple teaming brings offensive and defensive teams together for real-time collaboration. This helps blue defenders understand attacker tactics while enabling the offensive red team to see which defenses are effective.

2. Enhanced Visibility

Between the two teams, there is a lot of potential information to be shared across the most important assets and controls. Since attacks and defenses are tested simultaneously, security operation (SecOps) teams can immediately refine detection rules, alerts, and response procedures. Working together, the teams can spot weaknesses and quickly remediate the greatest risks to maximize their time and resources.

3. Continuous Validation

Purple team security provides continuous validation of current security tools and controls to uncover what is actually working against real-world attacks. This is easily viewable by breaking down silos and comparing what the blue and red teams see, which encourages a culture of continuous improvement. It also tests the organization’s readiness for ransomware attacks, phishing campaigns, and advanced persistent threats.

4. Greater Understanding of the Latest Threats

Purple teaming informs blue team defenders of the latest threat actor TTPs. Red teamers are also able to understand which TTPs are likely to be detected. Both sides are more informed and able to adapt their security practices through the combined purple team strategies.

5. Measurable Metrics for Security Maturity

By measuring which attacks are detected and prevented, purple teaming provides tangible metrics that show improvement in detection and response capabilities over time. Each quarter and year, teams can set up goals and create benchmarks to check overall security improvement.
For more benefits and best practices in building effective cyber purple teams, check out our purple team strategies PDF.

Purple teams unite red and blue teams to strengthen and defend their attack surface. Just like color mixing, purple teaming strategies combine defensive and offensive tactics to detect, respond to, and stop cyber threats.

Purple Team vs Red Team Comparison

A red team focuses on offensive tactics, such as pentesting and threat actor emulation, to simulate real-world attacks by exploiting vulnerabilities and pinpointing security weaknesses before real adversaries can do so.

The red team is composed of offensive security experts who require comprehensive knowledge of both technical and non-technical aspects of creating and deploying attack TTPs.

The main difference between the red team vs purple team is that the red team’s objective is to run attacks and identify vulnerabilities across the company’s environment, while the purple team’s objective is to test and improve the effectiveness of existing security controls with both offensive and defensive security experts who collaborate to test, improve, and validate security measures.

While red teams pinpoint vulnerabilities and weaknesses, purple teams run continuous purple team assessments to strengthen the organization’s overall security posture.

Watch this video to learn more about the differences between the red, blue, and purple team in cybersecurity.

Purple Team vs Blue Team Comparison

Blue teams zero in on defensive tactics like threat intelligence, monitoring, detection, and incident response. Blue teamers protect the organization through proactive and preventive measures. They defend against real or simulated exploitation by identifying anomalies that could indicate malicious activity and remediate vulnerabilities to prevent or mitigate cyber attacks.

Purple teaming combines the blue team’s strengths with the red team’s intel for real-time collaboration and improvement, and can create a full security coverage map for a stronger, more secure infrastructure.

Watch this video to learn more about red team, blue team, and purple team collaboration.

Quick Reference Table for Red Team vs Blue Team vs Purple Team

Looking for a quick cheatsheet on the blue team vs red team vs purple team? This table shows how they vary across functions, objectives, and more.

Table 1: The Difference Between Red, Blue, and Purple Teams

Here are a few effective examples of purple teaming to try when implementing purple team strategies.

Purple Teaming Example 1: Phishing for Knowledge Case Study

The red team performs a phishing simulation with an email that contains malicious attachments and custom payloads. On the blue side, analysts monitor email gateways as well as detections and response workflows to see how they respond to the phishing attempt.

This purple teaming use case validates the current detection and incident response processes. It also helps the cybersecurity team as a whole determine what they need to do to strengthen their defenses.

Purple Teaming Example 2: Alarming Alerts Case Study

The red team executes living-off-the-land attacks using PowerShell abuse and LOLBins. Meanwhile, the blue team monitors alerts triggered by their endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution and the logs within their security information and event management (SIEM) for false and accurate alerts.

This use case confirms that security controls are correctly detecting attacks and automatically alerting the blue team as soon as a security trigger is met, without creating unnecessary alert fatigue.

Learn more about the purple-teaming paradigm. Read our Effective Purple Teaming PDF eBook.

Purple team metrics are used to measure defensive and offensive security maturity. Overall, the goal is to work towards continuous improvement across all teams. Here are a few of the core purple team metrics to measure for success.

Table 2: Common Purple Team Metrics

Want to manage and measure risk better? Show clients or internal leaders the impact of your offensive security efforts by demonstrating a continuous reduction in risk through PlexTrac’s risk-based dashboard.

Purple teams utilize a combination of frameworks, open source communities, and collaboration tools. The most common purple team exercise frameworks and tools include:

MITRE ATT&CK®

MITRE ATT&CK® for purple teaming helps plan, execute, and map exercises by providing a common framework for establishing the scope and objectives of the purple team engagements. As the purple team pentesting and exercises are often short, they need to be highly focused. The MITRE ATT&CK® framework provides the required structure and easy-to-follow format.

Kill Chains

Kill chains, like Unified or Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain, are useful security operations (SecOps) frameworks that outline normal stages of a cyberattack, including reconnaissance, breach, and data exfiltration.

Open‑Source Tools

Open source tools provide repeatable simulations to test purple team workflows. A few examples include Atomic Red Team, APTSimulator, Infection Monkey, PurpleSharp, Network Flight Simulator (flightsim), and PSAttck.

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) Tools

Breach and attack simulation (BAS) platforms, like SCYTHE and BlindSPOT by OnDefend, provide advanced attack emulation to continuously assess risk posture and potential exposure.

With the PlexTrac + SCYTHE integration, data on attack emulation activities obtained using SCYTHE can be easily imported into PlexTrac and aggregated with other risk identification sources to provide a holistic view of the information security risk register.

With the BlindSPOT + PlexTrac API integration, organizations can create or update runbooks within PlexTrac’s Runbooks module. This integration allows purple teams to align tasks with the MITRE ATT&CK framework by automatically populating the runbooks with relevant details from BlindSPOT simulations.

Command and Control (C2)  Frameworks

Command and Control (C2) frameworks, like Cobalt Strike, Empire, and Mythic, can be used alongside ATT&CK mapping for post-exploitation capabilities to execute code, transfer files, exfiltrate data, or move laterally.

Collaboration, Management, and Reporting Tools

Collaboration and reporting tools such as Jira, ServiceNow, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and PlexTrac help manage purple team operations and facilitate collaboration among team members to track their efforts and progress toward achieving their objectives.

Additional frameworks and logging tools, such as the NIST cybersecurity framework and OWASP’s community-led open source projects for code, documentation, and standards, are beneficial for executing purple teaming strategies and exercises.

As we walked through what is purple teaming in cybersecurity, we shared how purple teams orchestrate the partnership between red and blue teams by combining their knowledge of attacks and defense for optimized security.

Purple team functions include:

• Attack simulation to test defenses
• Analyze threat detection and remediation capabilities
• Gain intel on offensive and defensive activities
• Encourage communication between teams for shared knowledge
• Identify weaknesses and corrective actions based on learnings

Purple team metrics to measure success include:

• Detection Rate: Shows alert coverage and any limited visibility
• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): Evaluates early detection speed
• Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR): Measures the response efficiency
• Dwell Time: Demonstrates the timeframe of compromised risk
• Time to Initial Access: Displays how reliable the current preventative controls are
• Time to Objective: Gauges defenses and internal detection barriers
• Threat Resilience Rate: Measures the improvement over time in detecting threats

PlexTrac was built to make collaborative security practices, like purple teaming, accessible and efficient for security teams of all sizes. Our innovative purple team platform offers solutions across the security lifecycle, improving effectiveness, efficiency, and collaboration in red team workflows, blue team remediation, and collaborative purple teaming efforts.

PlexTrac eliminates the drudgery of reporting so red teamers can focus on what’s most important — identifying security issues. Reports can be exported to custom Word formats with the click of a button. PlexTrac can even serve as a purple teaming client portal by granting blue team members access with role-based controls.

For blue teams, PlexTrac offers a comprehensive platform to consolidate security findings that may be sliced and diced with infinite flexibility. Our platform offers a status tracker and multiple integrations with ticketing systems, so findings can be reported and remediated in the same interface.

PlexTrac is a penetration test reporting and collaboration platform that makes security data aggregation, red and blue team reporting, purple team collaboration, and remediation tracking more effective and efficient.

In addition, PlexTrac Runbooks provides a space to house custom and industry-standard test plans from MITRE Engenuity, BlindSPOT, and SCYTHE.

Simply put, we’re the go-to purple teaming platform. Book a demo to see how PlexTrac can help your team today.

What Is the Purpose of a Purple Team?

A purple team merges offensive and defensive tactics into a unified process by bringing together red and blue teams to test and optimize security gaps. Rather than an actual team, purple teaming is an operational approach where attack simulations and defense strategies are run simultaneously in real time to improve detection, response, and security posture. 

How Does Purple Teaming Differ from Red Teaming?

Purple teaming and red teaming several ways. Red teaming is a simulated offensive exercise where red teamers run penetration testing, social engineering, or physical intrusion exercises to uncover vulnerabilities. These tests are typically run without notifying the blue team defenders.
Purple teaming, on the other hand, is an exercise of combining red and blue teams’ strategies in real time to optimize offensive and defensive plans, procedures, and tactics.

What Tools Do Purple Teams Use?

Purple Teams use a combination of offensive and defensive tools including:

• Red Team Tools: Frameworks like Metasploit, Kali Linux, custom scripts, and MITRE ATT&CK® tools to simulate attacker tactics and techniques. 
• Blue Team Tools: SIEM systems, Intrusion Detection System(IDS), EDR, Extended Detection and Response (XDR), firewalls, threat hunting platforms, and logging tools to detect and respond to simulated attacks. 
• Purple Team Tools: MITRE ATT&CK for mapping TTPs and planning exercises, automated breach-attack simulation platforms, and collaboration and reporting tools for optimal operations across teams.

How Can Plextrac Help with Purple Teaming?

PlexTrac is a platform designed specifically to support purple teaming by enabling:

• Adversary emulation planning and execution by empowering teams to script attacks, leverage built-in or imported simulation templates for MITRE, BlindSPOT, SCYTHE, and run iterative purple team cycles.
• Cross-team collaboration through shared reports, centralized discovery tracking, real-time feedback between red and blue groups, and structured debriefing workflows.
• Continuous improvement cycles with ongoing engagement, tracking remediation, validating controls post-tests, and scaling across teams of any size or maturity.

PlexTrac is a purple teaming platform that enables cybersecurity programs of all sizes to experience the benefits of purple teaming to ensure real progress.
See how PlexTrac consolidates data, saves time, reduces risk, and closes the loop on continuous validation. Request a demo today.

Actionable Purple Teaming

What Is Purple Teaming? — Cybersecurity

Purple Teaming as a Paradigm

Collaboration in Cybersecurity

Survey Says: Improve Your Security Posture by Purple Teaming

How to Organize Your Purple Teams

Redefining Purple Teaming in Cybersecurity

The 5 Activities of a Purple Teaming Engagement

PlexTrac for Purple Teamers

The Benefits of Purple Teaming

PlexTrac for Cybersecurity Teams

Continuous Purple Teaming Assessments

The Top 5 Collaboration Features in PlexTrac

PlexTrac for Blue Teamers

The Offensive Security Maturity Model: Get Ahead of Threats

What Is Red Teaming?