Red Team

Red Team Engagement

A Red team Engagement is a comprehensive, multi-faceted simulated attack assessing an organization's risk and vulnerabilities across personnel, processes, and technology.

What you'll get:
  • Targeted spear phishing against users depending on role
  • External perimeter assessment, evaluating exposed and public business assets for weaknesses
  • Open Source Intelligence Gathering conducted through search engine discovery and reconnaissance
  • Assumed breach simulation to test internal security and detection
  • Assess response capabilities to social engineering and network attacks
  • Recommendations for enhancing host configurations and network security
  • A comprehensive report with detailed findings and remediations steps

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What is a Red Team Engagement?

A red team engagement is an advanced, objective-driven security assessment that simulates a real-world cyberattack against your organization. Unlike penetration testing, which focuses on finding as many vulnerabilities as possible within a defined scope, red teaming tests your organization's ability to detect, respond to, and contain a sophisticated, multi-vector attack — typically with minimal staff awareness.

Red team engagements combine multiple attack vectors including social engineering, phishing, physical intrusion, network exploitation, and application attacks to achieve specific objectives such as accessing sensitive data, compromising critical systems, or demonstrating the impact of a full domain compromise. The engagement is designed to test not just your technology, but also your people and processes.

DarkPoint Security's red team engagements provide a realistic assessment of your organization's security readiness against advanced persistent threats (APTs), giving your security team and leadership an honest picture of how your defenses perform against a determined adversary.

Red team engagement

Why Your Organization Needs a Red Team Engagement

Traditional penetration testing tells you what vulnerabilities exist. Red teaming tells you whether your organization can actually detect and stop a real attack.

  • Test Your Detection Capabilities — Evaluate whether your SOC, SIEM, EDR, and security team can detect sophisticated attack techniques in real time
  • Assess Incident Response — Determine if your incident response procedures are effective when facing a realistic, evolving threat scenario
  • Validate Security Investments — Confirm that your security tools and controls are working as intended against advanced attack techniques
  • Board-Level Risk Communication — Provide leadership with a concrete, narrative-driven demonstration of organizational risk that goes beyond a list of vulnerabilities

Our Red Team Methodology

DarkPoint Security's red team engagements follow a structured methodology modeled on real-world adversary tactics:

  • MITRE ATT&CK Framework — Our primary framework for mapping adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) throughout the engagement
  • PTES — Structures the overall engagement lifecycle from threat modeling through reporting
  • NIST SP 800-115 — Guides our technical security testing and analysis approach
  • OSSTMM — Supplements our testing with operational security metrics

Our engagements typically follow the adversary kill chain: Reconnaissance (OSINT gathering on targets and infrastructure), Initial Access (phishing, social engineering, or perimeter exploitation), Persistence and Evasion (establishing footholds while avoiding detection), Lateral Movement (pivoting through the network toward objectives), and Objective Completion (demonstrating access to critical assets or data). Throughout the engagement, we document detections and misses by your security team.

Attack Vectors We Employ

Red team engagements combine multiple attack vectors for realistic threat simulation:

  • Targeted spear phishing campaigns
  • Social engineering (phone, email, in-person)
  • Physical security bypass and tailgating
  • External perimeter exploitation
  • Wireless network attacks
  • Custom payload development and C2
  • Active Directory attack paths
  • Credential harvesting and password attacks
  • Lateral movement and pivoting
  • Privilege escalation (local and domain)
  • EDR and antivirus evasion techniques
  • Data exfiltration simulation
  • Cloud environment exploitation
  • Supply chain attack simulation
  • Badge cloning and physical access
  • Assumed breach scenarios

Industries We Serve

DarkPoint Security provides red team engagements to mature organizations across Canada that need to validate their security program against realistic threats. We serve financial services and banking (OSFI TFSA red team requirements, PCI DSS), healthcare (protecting patient data systems, PIPEDA), technology and SaaS (protecting intellectual property, SOC 2), and government and public sector organizations. Our red team scenarios are customized to reflect the threat actors most relevant to your industry.

Why Choose DarkPoint Security

  • Realistic Adversary Simulation — We replicate the tactics, techniques, and procedures of real-world threat actors relevant to your industry, not just automated tool output
  • Multi-Vector Expertise — Our team combines expertise in network exploitation, social engineering, physical security, and application attacks for comprehensive red team operations
  • Certified Security Professionals — Our team holds OSCP, CEH, and CISSP certifications with hands-on red team experience
  • Proven Vulnerability Research — Our published CVEs demonstrate real-world offensive security capability and ability to discover novel attack techniques
  • Canadian Data Residency — As a Toronto-based firm, all engagement data, findings, and reports remain within Canadian jurisdiction

Frequently Asked Questions

A penetration test focuses on finding as many vulnerabilities as possible within a defined scope and timeframe. A red team engagement is objective-driven — it simulates a realistic attack to test your organization's detection and response capabilities. Red teaming uses stealth, combines multiple attack vectors, and typically runs longer with fewer restrictions. Penetration testing is a good foundation; red teaming is the next level for organizations with mature security programs.

Typically, only a small group of trusted stakeholders (the "white team") are aware of the engagement. This usually includes the CISO, CTO, or a designated point of contact. The broader IT and security teams are not informed so that the assessment provides an honest evaluation of detection and response capabilities under realistic conditions. Emergency escalation procedures are established in advance.

Red team engagements typically run 2 to 6 weeks, significantly longer than standard penetration tests. The extended timeframe allows for realistic reconnaissance, careful initial access attempts, stealthy lateral movement, and multiple attack phases. The duration depends on the objectives, scope, and the number of attack vectors included in the engagement.

Red team engagements are most valuable for organizations that already have a foundational security program in place — including regular penetration testing, a security monitoring capability (SOC or SIEM), and incident response procedures. If your organization is still building its security baseline, we may recommend starting with targeted penetration testing before progressing to red team exercises.

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