Imagine a group of authorized hackers quietly breaking into a company’s network, moving from system to system and leaving without anyone noticing.
That is not the plot of a spy movie. It is a real-world cybersecurity practice known as red teaming.
Red teaming traces its roots to military planning.
According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. military helped popularize the concept during the Cold War by using designated “enemy” teams to challenge strategies and defenses and expose weaknesses before real adversaries could.
Over time, the approach expanded beyond the military. Today, it plays a central role in cybersecurity and is increasingly used in areas such as artificial intelligence safety.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines a red team as a group authorized to simulate adversarial attacks on an organization’s systems.
The goal is to strengthen security by demonstrating the real-world consequences of a breach and testing how effectively defenders respond under realistic conditions.
Unlike basic vulnerability scans or checklist-driven audits, red teams emulate real attackers, using the same tools, tactics and techniques as cybercriminals or nation-state actors.
How red teaming works
A case study from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency illustrates how red teaming works in practice.
In 2022, a CISA red team assessed a large, multi-site critical infrastructure organization to determine how far it could penetrate the network without being detected.
The team began by establishing an initial foothold and then expanded access by moving laterally across systems and locations. It ultimately gained proximity to systems tied to sensitive business functions — the kind that, if compromised, could have serious operational consequences.
At one point, the red team attempted to access a key system but was stopped by multifactor authentication, which blocked further progress.
However, the organization never detected the team’s broader activity during the exercise, even when testers deliberately attempted to trigger defensive responses. The team moved through the network, escalated privileges and approached critical systems without being identified.
Why organizations use red teams
CISA says exercises like this are designed to uncover gaps and help organizations improve detection, monitoring and response.
By simulating real-world attacks, red teams provide a clearer picture of where defenses are effective and where they fall short. The goal is not to assign blame but to give organizations a chance to fix weaknesses before a real attack occurs.
Red teaming has become an essential part of modern cybersecurity programs. It goes beyond identifying technical vulnerabilities to test how people, processes and technology work together under pressure.
As threats grow more sophisticated, red teaming gives organizations a way to view their defenses from an adversary’s perspective and strengthen them before it is too late.
Organizations that rely only on routine audits may know what their defenses are supposed to do. Red teaming shows what they actually do when someone is actively trying to break through.
As cyber threats become more sophisticated, the practice gives security teams a way to see their own systems as an adversary would and close gaps before they matter most.
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