Two quotes on the table: standard pen test vs a red team exercise at 3x the price — is it worth the money?

The point of a red team isn't just breaking in; it's testing the blue team's (defense) ability to detect the intrusion. If you aren't centralizing logs via a SIEM or EDR across your network, the exercise loses its value. A pen test will give you far more actionable results right now for patching code-level flaws in your software.

we got excited and hired a red team two years ago. guys sent a fake shipping email to a company intern got in then wrote a 40-page report and left. felt like 50 thousand sar down the drain, turns out you need to patch the basics first.

For a platform with 300 wholesalers, a standard pentest usually reveals around 8-12 medium and high-severity vulnerabilities on average. In our test in the 25,000 SAR range, we caught 3 critical privilege escalation flaws and patched them in two weeks. We invested the money we would have spent on a red team into our infrastructure instead.

Your decision should be very simple: go for the 25,000 SAR pentest, and add an annual employee awareness and simulated phishing training software in the 5,000-10,000 SAR range. That way, you'll be testing the exact social engineering a red team would attempt in-house, for way less money.

Companies use the 'red team' label as a fancy marketing buzzword to jack up the price. 3 weeks of their supposed 4-week engagement is just passive waiting and reconnaissance anyway. For small-scale businesses, it's pretty much a luxury expense most of the time.

If your team is 15 people, a red team exercise will just cause pointless paranoia in the office, everyone will start looking at each other with suspicion... tbh secure your code and servers first. No point testing the backyard sensor when the front door isnt even locked.

Paying a burglar 75,000 SAR to 'see if you can sneak in' when you don't even have an alarm system or a security guard is truly a brilliant use of budget. Total waste of money just to watch them walk in through an open door.

Is there an explicit requirement like "red team exercise mandatory" in your contracts with B2B clients or with the payment gateway integrations you're subject to, or do they just ask for a general audit report?

How did you solve this? Forgotten test environments are more often the entry point than live systems.

Everyone rushing into red team cybersecurity gets stuck at the same point. Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

It's rare to find an explanation this clear.

i'd appreciate it if you shared the outcome.

I feel the same way. If 2FA is on, a stolen password alone is useless.

I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

Saved.

The most overlooked point about red team cybersecurity is this: Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Just a heads-up. The biggest time-waster for us was not knowing who had the final say.

Just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right.

Three different views emerged, they all complement each other. If the notification path is long, notifications don't arrive; missing notifications mean delayed incident detection.

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

You're right. The answer varies greatly by industry; there is no one-size-fits-all rule.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree, and I'd like to emphasize that. anyway if the notification path is long, notifications don't arrive; missing notifications mean delayed incident detection.

If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.