What is a Purple Team?
The best of both worlds — attack expertise and defense expertise working together to find and fix your weaknesses before real attackers do.
The Short Version
Red Team = attackers. Blue Team = defenders. Purple Team = both working together.
In a Purple Team engagement, we simultaneously try to break into your systems AND improve your defenses based on what we find. Instead of a separate attack report that takes weeks to act on, every finding is immediately turned into a defense improvement.
The result: your security improves in real time, not months later.
Why Is This Better Than Just Defending?
A defender who has never attacked doesn't know what attackers actually look for. They protect the doors they know about, but miss the windows.
Purple Team expertise means we think like an attacker while we're building your defenses. We know:
- Which vulnerabilities attackers actively exploit right now
- How ransomware operators move through a network after initial access
- Which security tools are easily bypassed and which actually work
- What "living off the land" attacks look like — attackers using your own tools against you
- How phishing campaigns are designed and how to train staff to recognize them
What Does This Mean for Your Business?
For a small or medium business, Purple Team capability translates to:
- Security assessments that find real problems: Not checkbox compliance, actual vulnerabilities attackers would exploit
- Better detection rules: We know what to look for because we know how attacks actually work
- More realistic staff training: Simulated phishing campaigns based on real attacker techniques
- Faster incident response: When we see an attack pattern, we recognize it immediately
- Honest security posture: We tell you what would actually stop an attacker, not just what looks good on paper
When Do You Need Purple Team?
Purple Team capabilities are most relevant for businesses in the Virtual CTO tier — organizations with more complex environments, higher risk profiles, or specific compliance requirements that demand verified security posture.
Examples:
- Law firms with high-profile or high-net-worth clients
- Medical practices with large patient databases
- Financial firms subject to regulatory examination
- Any business that has experienced a security incident and wants to understand how it happened
Want to Know How Vulnerable You Actually Are?
There's only one way to know if your defenses work: test them. We can tell you exactly what an attacker would find if they targeted your business today.
Book Your Assessment →