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As the sophistication of cyber attacks has risen, so have the costs. A single data breach costs an average of $4.4 million in 2025, according to IBM’s annual cost of a data breach report.

Fortunately, cybersecurity professionals in many organizations have improved both their prevention of and their responses to cyber attacks, in part by adopting a team approach. The latest iteration involves a color-coded lineup of three teams — red, blue, and purple. Each team plays a distinct role in testing and improving cybersecurity protocols.

To learn more, check out the infographic created by The University of Tulsa’s online Master of Science in Cyber Security program.

Team Colors

Cybersecurity professionals have long used penetration, or pen, testing to expose vulnerabilities in their organization’s networks. Pen testing involves assigning a team (which sometimes is an outside third party) to attack a network and uncover as many weaknesses as possible. A more advanced approach uses three different teams, red, blue, and purple, with each team playing a distinct role.

Red Team

The red team takes action to find and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the organization’s networks and systems as part of an attack simulation. Red team members include ethical hackers, experienced testers, and security researchers.

The red team’s responsibilities include:

• Reviewing: The red team looks for vulnerabilities in the organization’s networks and systems and determines which attack vectors are most likely to succeed, such as:

  • Phishing
  • Account takeovers
  • Email attachments
  • Attachments
  • Insider threats
  • Open ports
  • Unencrypted data
  • Infected webpages and applications
  • Vulnerability exploits

• Developing: Using what they’ve learned about the organization’s systems and which attacks might work best, the red team develops a plan of attack.

• Attacking: The red team launches their attack, trying to exploit any vulnerabilities they have uncovered and bypass security to access data and systems without alerting the blue team.

Blue Team

The blue team defends the organization’s networks and data during the red team’s testing exercise. Tests may focus on a specific issue or they may be more general, with the red team simulating an actual attack by trying to inflict as much damage as possible before being detected. Blue team members include cybersecurity analysts, network engineers, system administrators, and incident responders.

The blue team’s responsibilities include:

• Analyzing: After conducting a risk analysis, the blue team evaluates all vulnerabilities and defenses as well as existing mitigation measures. They may rank the importance of information technology (IT) assets to organizational operations, and determine the level of response needed to the threats against them.

• Responding: Once they have developed an understanding of the systems’ vulnerabilities, the blue team deploys patches to address them and hardens organizational assets against intrusion. They also respond to alerts based on the ranking system developed in the previous step.

• Monitoring: The blue team continues to monitor the systems for threats or incursions, responds, and improves the organization’s defenses.

Both the red and blue teams then prepare reports, with the red team explaining the attack, including which strategies succeeded and how, and the blue team detailing when and how they learned of the incursion and how they responded. They then submit these reports to the purple team.

Purple Team

The purple team is a combination of red and blue team members who come together to glean insights from the test. Purple team members include security architects, analysts, and incident response specialists.

The purple team’s responsibilities include:

• Documenting: With access to information from both teams, the purple team assesses and improves the documentation and communication process. They help the other teams organize their reports and create response protocols.

• Improving: The purple team develops recommendations to identify and respond to future threats. These may include specific responses to the test as well as overall hardening and defense improvements.

• Strategizing: As the bridge between attackers and defenders, the purple team is uniquely situated to take a long-term view of the test results. The team applies vulnerability research and their knowledge of the organization’s existing defenses to create strategies for responding to future threats.

Red Team vs. Blue Team vs. Purple Team

The red, blue, and purple teams are all vital to an organization’s cybersecurity efforts. They play similar but distinct roles, even if the players are the same, as sometimes happens in small departments.

• The red team attacks or plays offense.

• The blue team secures the systems and responds to attacks or plays defense.

• The purple team is a neutral party that helps both teams work together to improve security.

Cybersecurity firm Cymulate suggests that while “red team” and “blue team” are always nouns, “purple team” also can be used as a verb — for example, saying that members of the two groups purple team to improve vital security systems.

Colorful Defense

Penetration testing has always involved one group trying to break into a system and another group trying to defend it. Modern cybersecurity techniques give each group a color label, dictate a set of tasks for each, and designate a third group to bridge the gap and ensure ongoing improvement. Organizations need the activities of red, blue, and purple teams to ensure their resilience and avoid becoming part of next year’s cost of a data breach report.

Sources:

Cloudflare, “What Is an Attack Vector?”

Compass IT Compliance, “Penetration Testing: Understanding Red, Blue, and Purple Teams”

Cymulate, “Red Team vs. Blue Team vs. Purple Team in Cybersecurity”

ESecurity Planet, “Red Team vs. Blue Team vs. Purple Team: Differences Explained”

IBM, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025

NIST, Red Team/Blue Team Approach