Red Teaming: The Art of Ethical Hacking

Red Teaming is a process designed to detect network and system vulnerabilities and test security by taking an attacker-like approach to system/network/data access. This process is also called 'ethical hacking' since its ultimate purpose is to enhance security. Ethical hacking is an 'art' in the sense that the 'artist' must posses the skills and knowledge of a potential attacker (to imitate an attack) and the resources with which to mitigate the vulnerabilities used by attackers. Although this paper discusses the methodology and tools used to perform Red Teaming its purpose is to discusses the overall role of Red Teaming in evaluating a system's/network's security posture. The paper does not intend to be a 'how-to' guide to Red Teaming rather it justifies the need for such methods to provide an accurate situational awareness for network/system security.