Red Team Assessment Services That Expose Real Breach Paths Before AttackersDo

Red team engagements typically run from 2 weeks to 3 months depending on scope and objectives. A focused external red team with specific objectives may take 2 to 4 weeks. Comprehensive assessments covering external, internal, social engineering, and physical vectors for a large enterprise can extend to 2 to 3 months. Duration is determined during the scoping phase based on your organization's size, complexity, and defined objectives.

A penetration test identifies vulnerabilities across a defined scope to maximize finding coverage. A red team assessment simulates a real adversary pursuing specific business objectives, testing your detection, response, and resilience capabilities across any available attack vector. Penetration tests answer the question of what vulnerabilities exist. Red team assessments answer whether a determined attacker could achieve meaningful business impact despite your existing defenses.

Red team assessment pricing depends on scope, duration, objectives, and the attack vectors included. Engagements in India typically range significantly based on these factors. For context, global firms like Mandiant charge upwards of 200,000 USD for equivalent engagements. Security Brigade delivers comparable depth and methodology at competitive pricing for the Indian and regional market. Contact us for a detailed scoping call and custom proposal.

No. Red team engagements are conducted under strict rules of engagement that define boundaries, excluded systems, and escalation protocols. Operators are trained to simulate adversary behavior without causing denial of service, data corruption, or business disruption. If a critical system is inadvertently at risk during the engagement, the team follows pre-agreed escalation procedures immediately.

This depends on your objectives. In a blind engagement, only a small group of senior stakeholders are aware, and the SOC operates normally, providing a true test of detection and response. In a notified engagement, the SOC is informed but not given details about timing or vectors. Both approaches have value. We recommend blind engagements for mature SOC teams and notified engagements when the primary goal is security improvement rather than SOC evaluation.

For external red team engagements, we typically need only your organization name and internet-facing domain scope. ShadowMap handles initial reconnaissance. For engagements that include internal components, we need VPN credentials or a physical laptop drop-off. For social engineering, we need approval on target employee groups and communication boundaries. All requirements are documented in the rules of engagement before the assessment begins.

Every finding goes through our three-level L1, L2, and L3 review process. Red team operators document findings with step-by-step proof-of-concepts including Burp Suite captures and cURL commands. L2 senior consultants validate exploitability and confirm the attack path. L3 security architects verify business impact accuracy. No finding is included in the final report unless it is fully validated and reproducible.

RBI cyber security framework guidelines and SEBI cyber security circulars strongly recommend or mandate periodic red team exercises for regulated entities including banks, NBFCs, payment aggregators, stock exchanges, and market infrastructure institutions. The specific requirements vary by entity type and regulatory circular. Security Brigade has deep experience structuring red team engagements that satisfy regulatory audit requirements while delivering genuine security value.

You receive multiple deliverables including a technical report, findings tracker, attack story presentation, leadership deck, and board summary. We conduct debrief sessions with your security, IT, and leadership teams. Remediation walkthrough sessions help your teams implement fixes. Post-remediation retesting validates that attack paths have been effectively closed. For organizations that want continuous validation, we recommend annual red team exercises combined with ShadowMap for ongoing attack surface monitoring.

Yes. Purple team exercises are offered as a separate engagement where our red team operators work collaboratively with your blue team or SOC to improve detection rules, response playbooks, and monitoring coverage. Purple team exercises are typically recommended after a red team assessment has identified detection gaps, providing a structured environment to close those gaps with hands-on collaboration.