Purple TeamingRed and Blue Teams Working Side by Side to Prove Your Detections Actually Fire
Purple teaming is a collaborative security exercise in which an offensive team (red) runs real attacker techniques against your environment while your defensive team (blue) watches, in the open, to confirm which techniques were logged, which raised an alert, and which passed through unnoticed. The result is not a list of vulnerabilities. It is a measured map of your detection coverage and a tuning backlog that closes the gaps. Petronella Technology Group has tested and defended networks for regulated businesses in the Research Triangle and nationwide since 2002, and this page explains what a purple team exercise includes, how it differs from a penetration test or a red team assessment, and how to scope one that produces evidence an auditor and a board will both accept.
- Purple teaming measures detection, not just exposure. A penetration test asks "can an attacker get in?" A purple team exercise asks "when an attacker does each of these things, does anyone see it?" Both questions matter, and they have different answers in almost every environment.
- It is announced and collaborative by design. The red operator tells the blue team which technique is about to run, runs it, and both sides record what the logging, SIEM, EDR, or XDR platform did. Stealth is deliberately removed so that every technique becomes a data point.
- The unit of work is the technique, usually drawn from MITRE ATT&CK. Each technique is scored as detected and alerted, logged but not alerted, or not visible at all. That three-way score is the core deliverable and the thing you re-test later.
- It turns a security tool purchase into a verified capability. Most organizations that buy an EDR, XDR, or SIEM platform never test whether the default rules catch the techniques that matter to them. Purple teaming is how you find out before an incident does.
- It produces audit evidence. CMMC Level 2, NIST SP 800-171, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2 all expect you to monitor for attacks and to test your incident response capability. A purple team report documents both in a form assessors recognize.
What Is Purple Teaming?
Purple teaming is a structured security exercise in which offensive and defensive specialists work together, in real time, to test whether an organization's monitoring and response controls detect specific attacker techniques. The name comes from mixing the two traditional colors: the red team, which emulates adversaries, and the blue team, which defends. In a classic red team engagement the two sides never talk until the debrief. In a purple team exercise they sit in the same room, or the same call, and walk through each technique together.
The exercise works technique by technique. The red operator announces what is about to happen, for example credential dumping from memory on a workstation, or a scheduled task created for persistence, or outbound traffic to a command-and-control host over an uncommon port. The technique runs. The blue team checks the endpoint agent, the SIEM, the firewall logs, the identity provider, and whatever else is in scope, and reports what they saw. Everyone records the outcome. If the technique was not detected, the team works out why: the log source was not collected, the rule did not exist, the rule existed but was tuned too narrowly, the alert fired but was routed nowhere. Where possible the fix is made on the spot and the technique is run again.
That loop, run, observe, fix, re-run, is the whole point. A penetration test produces findings you remediate afterward. A purple team exercise produces detection improvements during the exercise, with proof that each improvement works, and a scored coverage map you can compare against the next exercise. Craig Petronella, MIT-certified cybersecurity professional, NC Licensed Digital Forensics Examiner (License 604180-DFE), and expert witness, has spent much of his career reconstructing incidents after the fact. Purple teaming is the discipline of finding the same gaps before the incident, while the cost of fixing them is a rule change rather than a breach investigation.
- An announced, collaborative exercise run with your defenders present and participating
- A test of detection and response controls against specific, named attacker techniques
- Scoped from a threat profile: the adversaries and techniques most likely to target your industry and your systems
- Scored per technique so coverage can be measured, reported, and re-measured after tuning
- Repeatable, and most valuable when repeated on a schedule as your environment and the threat landscape change
- Not a penetration test; it does not aim to find and exploit every vulnerability, and it does not replace one
- Not a covert red team assessment; stealth is removed on purpose so every technique is observed
- Not a product demo; it tests the rules and log sources you actually run, not what a vendor brochure says the platform can do
- Not a compliance checkbox; the report is evidence, but the value is the tuning that happens during the exercise
- Not a one-time event; a single exercise gives you a baseline, and the second one tells you whether you improved
Red Team, Blue Team, and Purple Team: How They Differ
The three colors describe roles, not job titles, and the same people can play more than one over the course of a year. What changes is the goal of the engagement, who knows what, and what the deliverable looks like. The table below summarizes the differences, and the sections that follow explain when each one is the right choice. Our vulnerability scanning vs penetration testing guide covers the assessment types that sit underneath all three.
A common misunderstanding is that purple teaming is a cheaper red team. It is not cheaper in effort, and it answers a different question. A penetration test is the right first engagement when you have not had one, because it finds the exposures an attacker would use to get in. A red team assessment is the right choice when your detection program is mature and you want to know whether it holds up against an adversary who is trying not to be seen. A purple team exercise is the right choice when you have monitoring tools in place and want to know, technique by technique, what they catch. Many organizations run a penetration test and a purple team exercise in the same year and get more from each because of the other.
Six Situations That Call for a Purple Team Exercise
Purple teaming pays off when there is something to tune. If you have no centralized logging and no endpoint detection, the exercise would simply record that nothing was seen, which you already know. The triggers below are the situations where the exercise changes what you do next.
You just deployed EDR, XDR, or a SIEM
Default detection content is written for the average environment, not yours. A purple team exercise in the first quarter after deployment tells you which of the platform's rules fire in your network, which log sources are missing, and which alerts are routed to nobody. It is the fastest way to turn a tool into a capability.
You are preparing for a CMMC, PCI DSS, or SOC 2 assessment
Assessors ask how you monitor for attacks and how you test your incident response capability. A scored purple team report, with the techniques run, the outcomes, and the tuning applied, is direct evidence for those questions rather than a policy document that says you intend to.
You outsource monitoring and want to verify it
A managed SOC or MDR provider promises detection and response. A purple team exercise coordinated with that provider measures what they actually see, how fast they escalate, and whether the escalation reaches the right person at your company at two in the morning.
You had an incident and want to prove the gap is closed
After an incident, the forensic report names the techniques the attacker used. Running those exact techniques again, with defenders watching, proves whether the new controls catch them. It is the difference between saying the gap is closed and showing it.
Your penetration test found the same things twice
When two consecutive tests report that an operator moved laterally and escalated privileges without being noticed, the vulnerability is not a patch. It is a detection gap. Purple teaming addresses the gap directly instead of waiting for a third test to report it again.
Cyber insurance or a customer is asking about detection
Insurance applications and enterprise vendor questionnaires increasingly ask whether you test your detection and response controls. A dated purple team report with measured coverage is a concrete answer, and the improvement between reports is a story underwriters and procurement teams understand.
What a Purple Team Exercise Includes, Step by Step
A well-run purple team exercise has a defined structure. The technical work in the middle gets the attention, but the scoping before it and the scoring after it are what make the exercise repeatable and the results defensible. Here is how Petronella Technology Group structures an engagement.
Threat profiling. We identify the adversary groups and campaign types most relevant to your industry, your technology stack, and your data. A defense contractor handling CUI, a medical practice with an EHR, and a SaaS company with a cloud-native platform each face different likely techniques, and the exercise should reflect that.
Technique selection using MITRE ATT&CK. From the threat profile we select a set of techniques across the attack lifecycle: initial access, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, defense evasion, credential access, discovery, lateral movement, collection, command and control, and exfiltration. A first exercise typically covers 20 to 40 techniques; a mature program rotates through many more over the year.
Scope, rules of engagement, and safety. We agree on the systems in scope, the accounts and hosts the red operator may use, the techniques that must be simulated rather than executed (destructive actions, for example), the hours, the stop conditions, and who has authority to pause the exercise. Everything is written down and signed before anything runs.
Detection baseline. Before the first technique runs, the blue team documents what they believe the current coverage is: which log sources are collected, which detection rules exist, and where alerts go. The gap between this belief and the measured result is often the most instructive finding of the whole exercise.
Execution and observation. The red operator announces each technique, runs it, and records the exact command, host, account, and timestamp. The blue team checks the endpoint agent, the SIEM, network sensors, identity logs, and cloud audit logs, and reports what appeared and when. Both sides score the technique together.
Tune and re-run. For each technique that was logged but did not alert, or was not logged at all, the team identifies the cause and, where it can be fixed inside the exercise window, fixes it: a new rule, a threshold change, a missing log source enabled, an alert routed to the right queue. The technique is then run again to confirm the fix works.
Scoring and reporting. Every technique receives a final score: detected and alerted, logged but not alerted, or not visible. The report maps scores to ATT&CK tactics, lists the tuning applied during the exercise with before-and-after evidence, and delivers a prioritized backlog for the gaps that need engineering work, new log sources, or budget.
Executive and audit debrief. Leadership receives a one-page coverage summary and the trend against any prior exercise. Compliance receives the evidence package mapped to the framework requirements the exercise supports. The technical team receives the backlog and a date for the next exercise.
Find Out What Your Detection Stack Actually Catches
Petronella Technology Group scopes purple team exercises for organizations in Raleigh, Durham, the Research Triangle, and nationwide, including engagements coordinated with an existing managed SOC or MDR provider. Call 919-348-4912 or schedule a consultation and we will walk through your current logging and detection tools and propose a technique set that fits your threat profile.
What a Purple Team Assessment Report Contains
The deliverable from a purple team assessment is built to be used by three audiences at once: the engineers who will close the gaps, the leaders who will fund the work, and the assessors who will ask for proof. Each section below is included in the report Petronella Technology Group produces.
Technique coverage matrix
Every technique run, organized by ATT&CK tactic, with its score, the data sources that saw it, the rule that fired or should have fired, and the time from execution to alert where an alert occurred.
Tuning log with evidence
Each change made during the exercise, the technique it addressed, the before result, the after result, and screenshots or log excerpts proving the re-run was detected. This section is what turns the exercise into audit evidence.
Log source gap analysis
The techniques that were invisible because a data source was not collected at all, for example PowerShell script block logging, DNS query logs, or cloud control-plane audit logs, with the configuration change needed to enable each one.
Alert routing and response findings
Where an alert fired but reached nobody, reached the wrong queue, or was closed without investigation. Detection that no human acts on is not detection, and this section is frequently where the largest improvements come from.
Prioritized detection engineering backlog
The gaps that could not be closed inside the exercise window, ranked by the likelihood and impact of the technique in your threat profile, with an estimate of the work involved and the log sources or tooling required.
Compliance evidence mapping
The exercise mapped to the framework requirements it supports, so the same report can be handed to a CMMC assessor, a PCI Qualified Security Assessor, a SOC 2 auditor, or a HIPAA compliance reviewer without rework.
How Purple Teaming Supports CMMC, NIST 800-171, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2
No major framework uses the phrase "purple team." Every major framework, however, requires the two things a purple team exercise produces: evidence that you monitor systems to detect attacks, and evidence that you test your incident response capability. As a CyberAB Registered Provider Organization (RPO #1449) with a team of CMMC Registered Practitioners, Petronella Technology Group scopes exercises so the report answers the assessor's question directly.
- NIST SP 800-171 requirement 3.14.6 calls for monitoring organizational systems, including inbound and outbound communications traffic, to detect attacks and indicators of potential attacks. A technique coverage matrix is direct evidence of what that monitoring actually detects.
- Requirement 3.14.7 calls for identifying unauthorized use of organizational systems. Techniques such as credential dumping, new account creation, and lateral movement test exactly this.
- Requirement 3.6.3 calls for testing the organizational incident response capability. An announced exercise in which the response team triages live alerts is a test of that capability, documented technique by technique.
- Our CMMC Level 2 compliance and NIST 800-171 pages cover the full practice set and how the evidence is organized in ComplianceArmor®.
- PCI DSS requires logging and monitoring of access to system components and cardholder data, regular penetration testing, and periodic testing of the incident response plan. A purple team exercise scoped to the cardholder data environment produces evidence for the monitoring and response testing requirements alongside the penetration test.
- HIPAA Security Rule provisions require security incident procedures and periodic technical evaluation of safeguards. An exercise focused on the techniques used in healthcare ransomware and data theft cases is a technical evaluation with a written result.
- SOC 2 Common Criteria in the monitoring and incident areas expect the organization to detect anomalies and security events and to respond to them. The tuning log and the alert routing findings speak directly to the operating effectiveness an auditor tests.
- Cyber insurance applications increasingly ask whether detection and response controls are tested. A dated report with measured coverage is a concrete answer.
How Petronella Technology Group Runs Purple Team Engagements
We have been on both sides of this work for a long time. Our operators run internal, external, cloud, and AI red teaming engagements, and our 24/7 Security Operations Center defends client networks every day through the Managed XDR Suite. That combination matters in a purple team exercise, because the person running the technique understands what the defender is looking at, and the person tuning the rule understands what the attacker will try next.
Scoping call and threat profile. We review your industry, your data, your existing tools, and any prior test or incident reports, and propose a technique set with a written rationale for each inclusion.
Rules of engagement. Systems, accounts, hours, simulated versus executed techniques, stop conditions, and a named authority on each side who can pause the exercise. Nothing runs until this is signed.
Baseline and instrumentation check. We confirm the log sources your team believes are collected are actually arriving, which removes a whole class of surprises before the exercise starts.
Execution in sessions. Techniques are run in grouped sessions by tactic, with your defenders, and with your managed SOC or MDR provider on the call if you use one, so the escalation path is tested along with the detection.
Tune, re-run, and score. Fixes that fit inside the window are made and verified during the session. The remainder go to the backlog with a priority and an effort estimate.
Report, debrief, and schedule the next one. The coverage matrix, tuning log, and backlog are delivered with a leadership summary and a compliance mapping. We recommend a follow-up exercise after the backlog is worked so the improvement is measured, not assumed.
Craig Petronella wrote about how attackers move through small and mid-sized business networks in How Hackers Can Crush Your Business, and the pattern he describes there, in which the intrusion is only discovered when the damage is already done, is the pattern a purple team program is designed to break. Since April 2002 the company has held a BBB A+ rating from 2003 onward and is rated 4.7 across 92 verified TrustIndex reviews and 5.0 across 15 Google reviews.
"Petronella Cybersecurity provides outstanding service! Their team is extremely knowledgeable, responsive, and truly cares about protecting their clients. They take the time to explain complex issues in simple terms and deliver real solutions, not just promises."
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Doing Nothing, Doing It Yourself, or Working With Petronella Technology Group
Purple teaming can be run internally by organizations with both offensive skills and detection engineering skills on staff. Most organizations have one or neither, and the gaps in the exercise mirror the gaps in the team. The comparison below is honest about where each option lands.
Six Purple Teaming Mistakes That Waste the Exercise
Most disappointing purple team exercises fail in the planning, not the execution. These are the mistakes we see most often and the way each one is avoided.
Testing techniques nobody would use against you
A generic technique list produces a generic result. Scope from a threat profile so every technique has a reason to be there, and so the coverage score means something to the people who will fund the fixes.
Running it without the defenders in the room
If the blue team receives a report afterward, it is a penetration test with extra steps. The learning happens when the defender watches the technique run and sees, in their own console, what did and did not appear.
Counting "logged" as "detected"
An event that lands in a log nobody queries is not a detection. Score the three states separately: alerted, logged only, invisible. The gap between the first two is where most of the tuning lives.
Skipping the re-run after a fix
A rule written under time pressure often has a typo, a wrong field name, or a threshold that never triggers. Re-running the technique is the only way to know the fix works, and it takes minutes.
Leaving the managed provider out
If a third party watches your alerts, they are part of your detection capability and must be in the exercise. Testing your tools without testing the escalation path measures half the control.
Treating it as a one-time project
Environments change, attackers change, and rules decay. One exercise gives you a baseline. The second one, after the backlog is worked, is where you learn whether the program is improving. Plan for the second exercise when you scope the first.
Scope a Purple Team Exercise for Your Environment
Whether you run your own SOC, rely on a managed provider, or are still deciding how to build detection, a scoping conversation will tell you what a first exercise should cover and what evidence it will produce for your next assessment. Call 919-348-4912 or send us a note and we will follow up with a proposed technique set and rules of engagement.
Purple Teaming: Frequently Asked Questions
What is purple teaming in cybersecurity?
What is the difference between purple teaming and a penetration test?
What is the difference between a red team and a purple team?
How long does a purple team exercise take?
Is purple teaming safe to run in a production environment?
Do we need a SIEM or EDR before doing a purple team exercise?
Can purple teaming be used as evidence for CMMC or a SOC 2 audit?
Does Petronella Technology Group offer purple teaming?
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Detection You Can Prove, Not Detection You Assume
Since 2002, Petronella Technology Group has helped regulated businesses in Raleigh and across the country test, defend, and document their environments. A purple team exercise is the most direct way to learn what your security tools catch and to fix what they miss, with a report your assessor will accept. Call 919-348-4912 or schedule a consultation to get started.
Last Updated: September 14, 2026. Written by Craig Petronella, MIT-certified cybersecurity professional, CMMC Registered Practitioner, and NC Licensed Digital Forensics Examiner (License 604180-DFE). Framework references are to NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 requirements 3.6.3, 3.14.6, and 3.14.7, the PCI DSS logging, testing, and incident response requirements, the HIPAA Security Rule, and the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria; technique names follow the MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base.