Learn Purple Teaming
Combine red and blue to actually measure and improve your detections.
Purple teaming is the collaborative practice where offensive (red) and defensive (blue) experts work together, in the open, to measure and improve an organization's ability to detect and respond to attacks. You learn it because running red and blue in isolation wastes the most valuable output of an attack - the chance to immediately fix what was missed. In a purple team, the red side executes a technique while the blue side watches whether their tools caught it, then both refine on the spot. It is the fastest feedback loop in security. The concepts are best learned by running through real techniques and detection checks in a lab.
What is purple teaming?
Purple teaming is a cooperative approach in which red and blue teams share information and work together to improve detection and response. The name reflects the mix: red plus blue. Rather than a separate standing team, purple is usually a function or mindset that brings the two sides together.
Its defining traits are:
- Collaboration over competition - the goal is shared improvement, not a contest.
- Transparency - the red side openly explains what it is doing and when.
- Immediate feedback - detections are checked and tuned during the exercise, not months later.
- Measurable outcomes - the result is concrete detection coverage, not just a report.
In short, purple teaming converts adversarial testing into a deliberate, fast learning process for the defenders.
Why does purple teaming matter?
Purple teaming matters because it closes the gap between finding a weakness and fixing it. A traditional red team engagement can reveal that defenders missed an attack - but the lessons may take weeks to act on, if they are acted on at all.
The benefits are concrete:
- Faster improvement - detections are validated and tuned in real time.
- Better coverage - gaps in monitoring are found and filled systematically.
- Shared understanding - defenders learn how attacks actually look, and attackers learn what defenders can see.
- Efficient use of effort - every emulated technique produces a measurable defensive outcome.
Crucially, purple teaming answers a question leadership actually cares about: not just are we vulnerable, but would we catch it if someone tried? That makes it one of the highest-value activities a security team can run.
How does a purple team exercise work?
A purple team exercise is a structured, repeatable cycle. Each technique becomes a small experiment with a clear pass or fail.
- Select techniques - choose adversary behaviors to test, usually mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and informed by relevant threats.
- Plan and align - both teams agree on what will be run and what good detection looks like.
- Execute - the red side performs the technique in a controlled way.
- Observe - the blue side checks whether logs, alerts, and tooling captured it.
- Score the outcome - was it prevented, detected, logged but missed, or invisible entirely?
- Improve - build or tune the detection, then re-run to confirm it now fires.
This loop repeats across many techniques, producing a clear, evidence-based picture of where defenses are strong and where they need work.
How do you validate detections?
Validating a detection means proving that a real attacker technique actually triggers the alert you expect. Without this, teams can have a false sense of security from rules that look correct but never fire on the real thing.
A simple validation outcome model helps make this concrete:
| Outcome | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Prevented | The attack was blocked outright |
| Detected | An alert correctly fired |
| Logged | Evidence was recorded but no alert fired |
| Missed | No evidence and no alert at all |
Each technique is run and graded against this scale. Anything below detected is an improvement opportunity: a missing log source, an absent rule, or a detection that needs tuning. Re-running after a fix to confirm the alert now fires is what makes validation trustworthy rather than aspirational.
How does purple teaming map to MITRE ATT&CK?
MITRE ATT&CK is the backbone of most purple team programs because it gives both sides a shared, structured catalog of real adversary techniques. It turns a vague goal - improve our detection - into a concrete, trackable plan.
Teams use ATT&CK to:
- Choose what to test - selecting techniques used by threat actors relevant to the organization.
- Communicate precisely - both sides refer to the same technique identifiers, avoiding ambiguity.
- Track coverage - visualizing which techniques are detected, logged, or invisible, often on a coverage map.
- Prioritize - focusing effort on the techniques that matter most for the organization's threat profile.
The result is a living map of detection coverage tied directly to real-world attacker behavior. This is why ATT&CK fluency benefits red, blue, and purple practitioners alike.
Frequently asked questions
What is a purple team?
A purple team is the collaborative function that brings offensive red and defensive blue practitioners together to improve detection and response. Rather than competing, the red side openly runs attacker techniques while the blue side checks and tunes detections in real time. The aim is measurable improvement in an organization's ability to catch real attacks.
What is the difference between a red team and a purple team?
A red team emulates an adversary to test defenses, often stealthily and with limited collaboration during the engagement. A purple team is intentionally collaborative: the red and blue sides share information continuously and tune detections on the spot. Purple teaming uses red team techniques, but its goal is joint, immediate improvement rather than an isolated assessment.
Do you need a dedicated team to do purple teaming?
No. Purple teaming is more often a mindset or recurring activity than a standing team. Even a small organization can run purple team exercises by having someone execute attacker techniques while defenders verify their detections. The essential ingredients are collaboration, transparency, and a structured loop of test, observe, and improve.
How is MITRE ATT&CK used in purple teaming?
MITRE ATT&CK provides a shared catalog of real adversary techniques that both teams use to choose what to test, communicate precisely, and track detection coverage. By mapping each tested technique to ATT&CK, a purple team builds a clear coverage map showing which attacker behaviors are detected, merely logged, or completely missed.
What does it mean to validate a detection?
Validating a detection means running a real attacker technique and confirming that the expected alert actually fires. It guards against rules that look correct on paper but never trigger in practice. A typical validation grades each technique as prevented, detected, logged but unalerted, or missed entirely, then drives fixes for anything below detected.
Key terms
Related reading
- How to Run a Purple Team Exercise: A Step-by-Step Guide
A practical guide to planning and running a purple team exercise - picking ATT&CK techniques, executing safely, validating detections and reporting results.
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Last updated: 2026-06-16