® 
How far can a determined adversary
go in your organisation?
Full adversary simulation targeting your crown jewels. Technology, people, and processes all tested. Your SOC's detection capability measured against a real attack.
What is red teaming?
You know you have security controls in place. You have invested in technology, processes, and people. You get a realistic answer to the question that matters most: can a determined adversary reach your most critical assets despite all of it? Red teaming is not a scan or a checklist. It is a weeks-long covert operation run by experienced offensive specialists who use every technique available, just like a real attacker would.
Red Teaming: the ultimate test of your security
Red teaming is the ultimate test of your security as a whole. Not a scope-limited pentest, but a realistic simulation of an attacker who tries to reach a specific objective: access to your crown jewels, exfiltration of customer data, manipulation of financial systems. You define the objective together with the team.
The red team operates as an advanced adversary. All attack techniques can be deployed: technical exploitation, social engineering, phishing, and physical access (if in scope). The attack runs over weeks and follows the full cyber kill chain from reconnaissance to objective achievement.
Red teaming is more than just attacking. It tests your complete defence chain: does your SOC detect the activity? Are your teams escalating correctly? Do your playbooks work? Red teaming delivers not only technical findings but strategic insight into the maturity of your security operation. DEFION reports not only what was achieved but how, and what could have been different if the defence had been more effective.
Three things pentests cannot tell you
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Whether your SOC detects real attacker behaviour
A pentest within a known scope and timeframe gives your team an advantage real attackers do not have. Red teaming is unannounced and uses genuine attacker tradecraft, revealing actual detection timing.
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Whether humans are your strongest or weakest link
Social engineering, phishing, and physical access bypass technical controls entirely. The most sophisticated firewall cannot stop a well-crafted pretext call to a helpful employee.
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Whether your crown jewels are actually reachable
Compliance-driven pentests confirm controls exist. Red teaming asks the harder question: if an attacker used every technique available, could they reach your most critical assets? That answer shapes your security strategy.
Scope of a red team engagement
How DEFION runs a red team engagement
Scoping and objective
Defining the attack objective, Rules of Engagement, communication channels, and engagement duration.
Reconnaissance (2 to 3 weeks)
Extensive OSINT, social engineering reconnaissance, and technical reconnaissance.
Initial access
Exploiting the most promising attack vector identified during reconnaissance.
Consolidation and lateral movement
Persistence, privilege escalation, and movement through the network toward the objective.
Objective achievement
Demonstrating that the objective is reachable: data exfiltration, system access, financial manipulation.
Reporting and purple team session
Comprehensive debriefing with red team and blue team together: what was seen, what was missed, and how to improve.
Deliverables
- Executive report with attack narrative and strategic conclusions
- Technical report with full attack timeline and TTP mapping (MITRE ATT&CK)
- Detection and response evaluation
- Social engineering results (if in scope)
- Strategic recommendations for detection, response, and prevention improvements
- Purple team debriefing session
Who is red teaming for?
Red teaming is for organisations with a mature security programme that want to test whether their investments actually hold. It requires a functioning SOC or security team to evaluate.
- Organisations with a mature security programme testing its effectiveness
- Financial institutions that need to perform TIBER tests
- Critical infrastructure under NIS2 that needs to demonstrate resilience
- Organisations that want to evaluate their SOC and incident response
- Companies that want to understand how far a targeted attacker can reach
FAQ
What is the difference between red teaming and a pentest?
How long does a red team engagement take?
Are employees tested via social engineering?
Can red teaming disrupt our operations?
What if the red team cannot get in?
Ready to find out how far an adversary can go?
Tell us your objective and constraints. We design the right engagement together.