Firm is recommending a purple team exercise instead of a penetration test—what is it and do we need it?

From a technical standpoint, the red team attacks and the blue team tries to detect. Purple team is simply a refereeing or collaboration protocol. The attacker runs a specific technique, you check if the blue team got a log, and if not, a rule is written. If you don't have anyone actively managing centralized logging and EDR in-house, you won't be able to operationalize the technical output from this drill.

We jumped into an exercise like this last year with our 45-person team, paying 14,500 dollars out of sheer enthusiasm. Our systems engineer couldn't pull his head out of meetings for 10 days, and our routine server maintenance fell behind. In the end, we were left with dozens of configuration recommendations that we never had the time to implement. Going back to classic testing was a huge relief.

Security consultancies keep pushing buzzwords like this lately because margins on routine pentests have dropped. Trying to sell a 16,000 dollar collaborative exercise to a company with a two-person infra team is not consulting in good faith. They've packaged a service that just doesn't fit your profile.

edit: typed from phone, sorry for typos.

For a purple team exercise to be effective, three conditions must be met: 1) A centralized log collector and endpoint detection system must be in place, 2) There must be at least one full-time blue team member actively managing these systems daily, 3) Basic penetration test vulnerabilities must have already been fully patched in the past. Without these, you're just throwing money away.

Edit: asked below, I wrote the answer in the second message.

our two-person infra team would drown in those meetings. tying up sysadmins for two whole weeks would completely paralyze the company operationally. stick with a classic pen test imo.

Tell the vendor straight up: We do not have a dedicated internal cyber defense team, so please remove the purple team scope and revise the proposal strictly for external and internal penetration testing. If they push back, just go with your previous vendor or another independent testing firm.

Not really my area of expertise but can't the blue team be the third-party support firm we outsource to? Can't we just loop them into this test?

In organizational maturity models, purple teaming is considered an advanced process. When regulators or major corporate clients require an independent audit report, they will want to see an official penetration testing report rather than purple team exercise minutes. From this perspective as well, a traditional test takes priority.

Do you think this works at any scale? Taking notes for two weeks yields better results than a six-month estimate.

exactly, and not many people know this. when we decide without measuring we always end up in the same place.

most incidents start with a leaked password not a vulnerability.

Absolutely. If I were to add anything: When making decisions, write down the worst-case scenario too, not just the best.

The harder it is to reverse a decision, the slower you should make it.

Could you elaborate on that? Everyone rushing into purple team cybersecurity gets stuck at the same point.

If you post the result here, it will help others too.

Let me share what happened to me; it might be useful. Having backups accessible on the same network and with the same identity makes them part of the target.

Just leaving this note, it might be useful.

let me share my experience. tbh if you get three different answers on a topic the question was asked wrong.

forgotten test environments are more often the entry poitn than live systems.

Let me summarize what's been said so far. Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix.

Good luck with that.

Timely topic.

Following. If it's your first time, start small; scaling comes later.

If you post the result here, it will help others too.

Thanks a lot, I'll try it today.