Faced with the growing diversity of threats, whose sophistication is amplified by the use of artificial intelligence (customized phishing, deepfakes, and the like), offensive security experts continue to evolve in order to accurately mirror attackers and stay a step ahead.
Where traditional audits reveal vulnerabilities and non-conformities within a defined perimeter, they do not truly represent the realism of a targeted cyberattack against a company in the abstract: this tightly scoped framework often prevents exploration of what the organization has not imagined.
Lifting the Blind Spots of Conventional Cybersecurity
Indeed, penetration tests, vulnerability scans, and other compliance audits are generally conducted on a narrow slice of the enterprise’s information system: a web application, the internal network of a subsidiary, a CI/CD pipeline, a specific unit… These “classic” audits enable security consultants to implement attack scenarios that are known, documented, and often exploitable with open-source tools. However, they do not capture the full set of factors that influence the actual security level of the organization.
For example, the combination of weaknesses at different levels—humans, processes, and technology—can cumulatively yield substantial impacts. And a spear-phishing campaign leveraging an internal event, paired with a voice deepfake, could bypass user vigilance and grant an attacker initial access to the internal network from a compromised workstation. Merely satisfying a checklist cannot, unfortunately, prevent such scenarios from occurring.
A real attacker aiming to harm a company through ransomware deployment or industrial espionage will not confine themselves to a single perimeter like an auditor; they will consider the organization’s assets in their entirety: external logical perimeter, employees, physical infrastructure, the internal network, and more.
Red Team audits are not a one-off technical test. They are adversary simulations conceived for duration and grounded in the target’s threat model. They begin from an offensive posture: threat intelligence, realistic scenarios, exploitation of the human, procedural, and technical chains. The methodology combines intelligence (both open source and targeted), realistic scenarios, controlled executions, and evaluation of noise, response, and internal coordination.
This type of exercise has two major objectives:
> Highlight a complete scenario illustrating the compromise of critical assets (the so‑called “crown jewels”);
> Test the detection and response capabilities of the defense team, the so‑called “Blue Team,” to assess how an organization reacts under real pressure, and to generate a resilience diagnosis: how long to detect? How long to block? Who decides? Which procedures limit the attacker’s options? What internal communications are triggered (or not)?
For leadership, these lessons are invaluable: they transform previously untested hypotheses into measurable data and actionable levers.
A Strategic Tool for Executive Leadership
The value of a Red Team audit is measured by its strategic usefulness: the report, the chain of compromise, and the timeline provide senior management with clear, prioritized, and risk-management-ready takeaways: highlighted scenarios, exploited vectors, simulated impacts, identified organizational weak points…
Transparency and internal communication are essential: informing the relevant stakeholders without fueling panic and preparing a pragmatic remediation plan. Ideally, Red Team audits are followed by Purple Team exercises, in which auditors and security teams collaborate in joint sessions to close gaps, improve detections, and refine intervention methodologies. This ongoing cycle (simulate, learn, correct, verify) elevates the organization’s resilience against real threats.
Beyond a technical audit, the Red Team exercise thus becomes a powerful strategic lever: it turns cybersecurity into a forward-looking instrument for the executive committee, strengthens coordination between teams, and shifts the focus toward business resilience rather than mere compliance.
* Richard Disaro is a consultant at XMCO
