Security Jersey Colors

I realized after my previous post that not everyone may be familiar with the "color" system used to designate various military security teams. I referenced a "red team" in my post NSA IAM and IEM Summary, for example.

I thought it might be helpful to post my understanding of these colors and to solicit feedback from anyone who could clarify these statements.


  • Red Team: A Red Team is an adversary simulation team. The Red Team attacks the asset to meet an objective. This activity is called penetration testing in the commercial world.

  • Blue Team: A Blue Team is a security posture assessment and evaluation team. The Blue Team determines the vulnerabilities and exposures of an enterprise. This activity is called vulnerability assessment in the commercial world.

  • White Team: A White Team (or usually a "White Cell") controls the environment during an exercise. The White Cell provides the framework in which the Red Team attacks friendly forces. (Note that in some situations the friendly forces are called the "Blue Team." This is not the same Blue Team that conducts vulnerability assessments and evaluations. Blue in this case is simply used to differentiate from Red.)

  • Green Team: The Green Team is usually a training group that helps the asset owners. Alternatively, the Green Team helps with long-term vulnerability and exposure remediation, as identified by the Blue Team. These descriptions are open for discussion because I haven't seen too many green team activities.


Did I miss any colors?

Comments

Clint Laskowski said…
And, in fact, this is why I called my company 'BlueHat Security", because I was helping clients defend and assess their security (meets both of your definitions), and because there is also a book about the six thinking hats (and the blue hat is kind of the 'big picture' hat or the meta hat).

Obviously, there is also the Microsoft BlueHat Security Conference. But I think I was using the name officially before they did.

www.bluehatsecurity.com
(this site is currently under re-development).

-- Clint
clint@bluehatsecurity.com
3:47 PM
Marcin said…
Nice choice of color (Polish) for the jersey... :)
6:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more