The Pain of Facilitating Transparent Purple Team Engagements — Solved!

Pain Points Addressed by Runbooks for PlexTrac

It isn’t just in the planning where challenges lie in building a robust cyber security program. Executing on the plan also carries its share of pain points. Red and blue teams primarily still act as independent units unconcerned with the success of the opposition. We all know this lack of urgency about collaboration is problematic, but the paradigm shift is hard to make, especially without the right support.

What cybersecurity groups need to move toward a purple teaming paradigm are tools to facilitate transparent engagements and ways to participate in real-time collaboration. The more the teams are working together toward a common goal, the more effective the exercises will be and, in turn, the cybersecurity program itself.

But how do you get there? How do you bring teams together, execute effective activities, and then extract the evidence needed to put the acquired knowledge to work in strengthening the greater program?

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Ensure Complete Coverage of the Attack Surface

One of the first steps to executing effective engagements is having a clear view of the attack surface. When both teams know the attack surface well, they can test and protect efficiently. Having a map of all the possible attack vectors before entering an engagement will allow the real vulnerabilities to be identified and remediated without wasting time or energy.

PlexTrac Runbooks provides the active database of procedures your team needs in order to execute exercises or deal with an active threat with checklist precision. You can achieve full coverage of the attack surface if you have the integrated, accessible catalog of vulnerabilities and remediations that Runbooks can help you create.

Track Each Step of Execution by Both Red and Blue Teams

Purple teaming is especially hard when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Let’s face it, that’s usually the case between the red and blue teams during an active engagement and often times well after it is over. The results might get shared but not necessarily how those results were achieved. What’s really needed is real-time collaboration between the teams before, during, and after engagements. Basically, purple teaming occurs when both teams are working toward the larger goal together, which requires tracking throughout the attack lifecycle.

Track each step of execution by both red and blue teams with Runbooks. Easily produce time stamped activity logs that facilitate collaborative debriefs. Knowing who did what and when will help the team learn more from exercises and add helpful plays for future engagements. Runbooks can help both teams become more and more effective by giving everyone the complete picture of an event.

Effortlessly Collect Evidence

Finally, making the most of purple teaming requires reporting and debriefing. Arguably the boring and laborious parts of the job, they are also some of the most crucial. Collecting evidence of an effective technique, for example, during an active engagement doesn’t have to be a pain, and it can be a huge time saver later.

Runbooks makes gathering evidence like screenshots and logs effortless. Capture key information and save it in the system in the moment, then you’ll have what you need to debrief after an event or prepare formal reports.

If purple teaming is your goal, PlexTrac is the platform you need to execute transparent purple teaming engagements and move toward purple teaming as a mindset. The Runbooks module can make every step of your engagement more efficient by helping teams gain a clear view of the attack surface, track the actions of both the red and blue teamers, and catalog the key data necessary for debriefing and reporting. 

Schedule a demo today to see what Runbooks can do for you.