Blue teaming is the practice of creating and protecting a security environment and responding to incidents that threaten that environment. Blue Team cybersecurity operators are adept at monitoring the security environment they protect, regardless of existing vulnerabilities or vulnerabilities caused by attackers. Blue’s team members manage her security incidents and use lessons learned to harden the environment against future attacks.
So why are the blue teams important? What role do they actually play?
Why is blue teaming important?
No product or service built on technology is immune from cyberattacks. First, technology providers are responsible for protecting their users from internal or external cyberattacks that can compromise their data and assets. Technology users also have this responsibility, but there is little they can do to protect poorly secured products and services.
Regular users cannot hire a department of IT experts to design security architectures or implement their own security-enhancing features. It’s a fiduciary responsibility for companies dealing with hardware and network infrastructure.
Regulatory bodies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also play a role. For example, NIST designs a cybersecurity framework that companies use to ensure that his IT products and services meet security standards.
everything is connected
Everyone connects to the Internet through hardware and network infrastructure (think laptops and Wi-Fi). Critical communications and businesses are built on these infrastructures, connecting them all. For example, take a picture and save it on your phone. Back up those files to the cloud. You can then share the moment with your family and friends using your phone’s social media apps.
Banking apps and payment platforms allow people to shop without having to physically stand in line or mail a check, and even file their taxes online. All of this takes place on platforms that connect via wireless communication technology built into phones and laptops.
If a hacker compromises your device or wireless network, they can steal your private photos, banking logins, and identity documents. They can even impersonate you and steal things from people within your social circle. This treasure trove of stolen information can then be sold to other hackers or demanded a ransom.
Worse, the cycle doesn’t end with a single hack. Being the victim of one hack doesn’t mean other attackers will avoid you. Perhaps it makes you a magnet. Therefore, it is best to prevent attacks from starting in the first place. When prevention doesn’t work, it’s important to limit damage and prevent future attacks. On the user side, multi-layered security can be used to limit exposure. The company delegates that task to the blue team.
blue team role player
A blue team consists of technical and non-technical security operators with specific roles and responsibilities. But of course, the blue team can be large and have subgroups of multiple operators. In some cases, roles may overlap. The Red Team and Blue Team exercises typically have the following role players:
- The blue team plans defensive operations and assigns roles and responsibilities to other operators in the blue cell.
- Blue cells consist of defending Operators.
- Trusted agents are those who know about the attack or have red teamed it from the beginning. Trusted agents are neutral despite their prior knowledge of the exercise. A trusted agent does not interfere in the work of the red team or advise the defense.
- The White Cell consists of Operators who act as buffers and work with both teams. They are the referees who ensure that the activities of the Blue and Red Teams do not cause unintended problems outside the scope of their involvement.
- Observers are people whose job it is to watch. They watch the engagement unfold and write down what they observe. Observers are neutral. Most of the time I don’t even know who’s on the blue team and who’s on the red team.
- A red team consists of operators who launch attacks against a target’s security architecture. Their job is to find vulnerabilities, poke holes in their defenses, and outsmart the blue team.
What is the purpose of the blue team?
The goals of the blue team depend on the security environment in which the team is located and the state of the company’s security architecture. That said, the blue team usually has four main objectives.
- Identify and contain threats.
- Eliminate threats.
- Protect and recover stolen assets.
- Document and review incidents to improve response to future threats.
How does blue teaming work?
In most organizations, blue team operators work in the Security Operations Center (SOC). The SOC is where cybersecurity professionals run a company’s security platform and monitor and handle security incidents. The SOC is also where operators support non-technical staff and users of corporate resources.
Incident prevention
The blue team is responsible for understanding and mapping the scope of the security environment. It also records all assets in your environment, their users, and the state of those assets. Based on this knowledge, the team takes measures to prevent attacks and accidents.
Measures taken by blue team operators to prevent incidents include setting administrator privileges. In this way, unauthorized persons cannot access resources they should not have access to. This measure is effective in restricting lateral movement if an attacker penetrates.
Incident prevention includes setting up full disk encryption, virtual private networks, firewalls, secure logins, and authentication, as well as restricting administrative privileges. Many blue teams also implement deception techniques, which are traps set using dummy assets to catch attackers before they can cause damage.
Incident response
Incident response refers to how the blue team detects, responds to, and recovers from breaches. Some incidents trigger security alerts, but it’s impossible to respond to all triggers. Therefore, the blue team should set a filter on what counts as an incident.
This is typically done by implementing a security information and event management (SIEM) system. The SIEM notifies Blue’s team of operators when security events occur, such as unauthorized logins combined with attempts to access sensitive files. Automated systems typically receive notifications from SIEMs to identify threats and escalate to human operators if necessary.
Blue team operators typically respond to incidents by isolating the compromised system and removing the threat. Incident response means turning off all access keys in case of unauthorized access, writing a press release if the incident impacts customers, releasing a patch, etc. The team then conducts post-breach forensic audits to gather evidence that helps prevent recurrence.
threat modeling
Threat modeling is when operators simulate attacks using known vulnerabilities. The team develops a handbook for threat response and communication with stakeholders. So, in the event of an actual attack, the blue team has a plan on how to prioritize assets and allocate manpower and resources to defense. Of course, things rarely go as planned. Still, having a threat model helps blue team operators keep the big picture in mind.
Robust Blue teaming is aggressive
The Work Blue team of operators ensures that your data is safe and your technology is safe to use. However, due to the rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape, blue teams cannot prevent or eliminate all threats. You can’t over-enforce the system either. It may become unusable. What they can do is accept an acceptable level of risk and work with the red team to continuously improve security.
