Red teaming, also called alternative analysis, is an organized process that can be used to assess weakness or vulnerability in an organization’s plans. To perform the analysis, a red team adopts an adversarial approach to systematically challenge plans and systems to identify any potential faults or flaws.
This method has historically been used by the US military, with a red team emulating an adversary and challenging the blue team’s operational plans. The red team uses tactics and techniques that are appropriate for the particular opponent to create an accurate simulation.
Red teaming is also used extensively in cybersecurity. To test an organization’s security posture, a red team can combine ethical hacking with physical security and social engineering tactics to assess an organization’s vulnerabilities to both external and internal threats.
While red teaming has its roots in military and cybersecurity analysis, it’s a valuable tool to evaluate the operational and strategic plans of any business. Much like ACTN Strategies, red teaming takes a holistic approach to risk – it can be used to assess threats and vulnerabilities from any number of perspectives.
Red teaming can be used to assess challenges from competitors or general flaws in a business continuity plan. This process is, of course, a valuable tool to assess your company’s cybersecurity posture, but it’s equally valuable in overcoming cognitive errors and assessing the strength of your strategic plan and operational resilience.
Red teaming is an effective way to determine any weakness in a plan or system, but what a company chooses to do with that information is equally important. Based on the findings from the analysis, the next step is to address any issues that have been uncovered, and, if appropriate, to retest the updated plan.
At ACTN Strategies, we invest the time to understand your business’s operating environment. We offer red teaming as part of our operational resilience services to identify weaknesses in continuity planning and as part of our global intelligence services to assess the potential impact of foreign and domestic trends. To learn more about how red teaming can benefit your business, drop us a line at [email protected].