How NetAssist’s Managed SOC Takes a Proactive Approach to Cybersecurity Via Purple Teaming

In today’s increasingly dynamic threat landscape, a reactive approach to cybersecurity is no longer sufficient to combat ever-evolving cyber-attacks.

Traditional Security Operation Centres (SOCs) typically focus on monitoring, detecting, and responding to existing cyber threats — a ‘blue team’ approach of using security information and event management (SIEM) and threat intelligence.

However, cyber criminals are continually improving their malicious tactics – a trend that has only worsened with the widespread availability of generative AI. That is why NetAssist has incorporated a team solely dedicated to proactive threat hunting, a ‘red team’, into our SOC operations to better protect clients from evolving threats.

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What are Red & Blue Teams?

A blue team’s primary responsibility is to defend an organisation’s assets through analysing its security posture and taking measures to address existing flaws and vulnerabilities. The team is also in charge of monitoring breaches and responding to cyber threats, as mentioned above.

In contrast, a red team focuses on offense: their efforts are funneled into simulating cyber-attacks and probing client systems for potential vulnerabilities. This allows cybersecurity teams to anticipate attacks used by cyber criminals, take actionable solutions, and patch weaknesses before they are exploited.

By incorporating both red and blue tactics into our SOC operations, NetAssist is able to proactively neutralize potential attacks to our clients. This ‘purple teaming’ approach integrates the best of blue and red team activities, and allows us to deliver a more comprehensive and robust protection in compassion to traditional SOC services.

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The Benefits of Purple Teaming

In our experience, unifying red team and blue team tactics into a singular SOC powerhouse result in more effective and holistic operations – which enables us to better strengthen our client’s overall security posture.

 

For example, a purple-team SOC is capable of:

⦁ Improved threat detection: The red team provides insights into potential attack vectors by cyber threats, who in turn informs the blue team’s monitoring and detection strategies. This allows the SOC to stay ahead of cybercriminal tactics and identify threats quickly.

⦁ Enhanced incident response: By understanding how attackers operate, blue teams can develop targeted incident response plans that are more effective at minimising damage.

⦁ Strengthening security defenses: Red team vulnerability assessments guide the blue team’s implementation of improved security controls, monitoring parameters, and detection configurations.

⦁ Knowledge sharing: Active collaboration and knowledge sharing between the two teams allows the organisation to build a robust foundation of threat expertise, resulting in more efficient operations over time.

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We aim to empower clients to not just react to threats, but to actively prevent them. With purple teaming bridging the gap between offensive and defensive security, we are confident that our SOC services are capable of proactive threat mitigation for our clients – and it will only continue to improve as we continue to innovate on our approach.

Have further questions? Please reach out to us at [email protected] for more information.