Client Profile
A large financial services company handling sensitive banking transactions, customer data, and regulatory compliance sought to evaluate its overall security posture against real-world cyber threats. Given the rise in sophisticated cyber-attacks, insider threats, and regulatory scrutiny, the company wanted to test its defenses, incident response capabilities, and security awareness through a full-scale Red Team assessment.
Challenges Faced
Before undergoing Red Teaming, the copany identified several security concerns:
- Potential gaps in perimeter security, such as firewall misconfigurations and exposed services.
- Weak endpoint security, leaving internal systems vulnerable to malware and privilege escalation.
- Employee susceptibility to phishing, increasing the risk of social engineering-based breaches.
- Unpatched vulnerabilities in internal applications, which could be exploited by attackers.
- Weak identity & access management, allowing privilege escalation and lateral movement.
- Lack of real-world attack simulation, making it unclear how effective their incident response team was.
- Compliance gaps with ISO 27001, PCI DSS, GDPR, and industry-specific regulations.
Our Approach
To thoroughly assess the company’s security defenses, we conducted a multi-layered Red Team assessment, simulating real-world adversarial tactics to test cyber resilience.
Scoping & Threat Modeling
We collaborated with the client to define:
- Scope of the Red Team operation, including internal networks, web applications, cloud environments, and physical security.
- Attack scenarios based on real-world threat actors, such as nation-state attacks, financial fraud attempts, and insider threats.
- Rules of engagement, ensuring a safe but realistic attack simulation.
- Compliance considerations, aligning with GDPR, PCI DSS, NIST 800-53, and ISO 27001 standards.
Execution of Red Team Operations
Using Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) from MITRE ATT&CK and real-world adversarial methodologies, we executed a full-scale attack simulation, covering:
- Reconnaissance & OSINT – Gathering publicly available data on employees, domains, and infrastructure.
- Phishing & Social Engineering – Conducting targeted spear-phishing campaigns to test employee awareness.
- Initial Compromise – Exploiting weak passwords, misconfigured VPNs, and public-facing applications.
- Privilege Escalation – Identifying unpatched vulnerabilities and misconfigured access controls.
- Lateral Movement – Using pivoting techniques to move deeper into internal networks.
- Exfiltration & Persistence – Testing data extraction methods while maintaining long-term access.
- Cloud & API Attacks – Assessing misconfigurations in AWS, Azure, GCP, and third-party APIs.
- Physical Security Testing – Evaluating facility access controls, tailgating risks, and badge security.
- Incident Response Evasion – Testing SOC and SIEM detection capabilities to see if attacks were noticed.
- Ransomware & Data Exfiltration Simulation – Assessing the organization’s resilience against financial and operational threats.
Findings & Risk Assessment
After completing the Red Team engagement, we provided a detailed security report, including:
- Attack path analysis, mapping how an adversary could infiltrate the organization.
- Critical, High, Medium, and Low-risk findings, categorized by business impact.
- Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploits, demonstrating real-world attack vectors.
- Effectiveness of the Security Operations Center (SOC), showing how well incidents were detected and responded to.
- A prioritized remediation roadmap, helping the company strengthen defenses efficiently
Remediation Support & Security Hardening
To ensure continuous security improvements, we provided:
- Enhanced SOC monitoring, with improved threat detection rules.
- Employee security awareness training, reducing phishing and social engineering risks.
- Patch management strategies, ensuring exploitable vulnerabilities were fixed.
- Hardening of identity & access controls, preventing privilege escalation.
- Redesign of firewall rules and network segmentation, limiting attack surface exposure.
- Incident response drills and tabletop exercises, improving SOC readiness.
Results Achieved
Within six weeks, the company successfully:
- Closed all critical security gaps identified during the Red Team assessment.
- Improved its SOC detection and response time by 60%.
- educed phishing susceptibility by 45% through targeted employee training.
- Implemented stronger security controls, ensuring long-term cyber resilience.
Conclusion
By leveraging our Red Teaming expertise, we helped the company identify security weaknesses, improve its cyber resilience, and enhance its ability to detect and respond to sophisticated attacks. Our real-world attack simulations provided invaluable insights, allowing the company to proactively strengthen its defenses against evolving threats.
Need a Red Team Assessment?
If you’re looking to test your organization’s security defenses against real-world attack scenarios, reach out to us today for a customized Red Team engagement.
COE Security LLC
COE Security is a leading cybersecurity services provider, offering comprehensive solutions to address the evolving threat landscape. We have a proven track record of helping organizations of all sizes mitigate risks, strengthen defenses, and recover from cyberattacks. Our team of experienced cybersecurity professionals possesses deep expertise in the latest technologies and best practices, enabling us to deliver tailored solutions that meet your unique security needs.
We offer a wide range of services, including:
Security Services
- Application Penetration Testing – Assessing the security of applications by simulating real-world attacks to identify vulnerabilities.
- Mobile Application Penetration Testing – Evaluating the security of mobile applications on Android and iOS to detect potential risks.
- Web Application Penetration Testing – Identifying and mitigating security flaws in web applications to prevent cyber threats.
- Thick Client Penetration Testing – Testing desktop applications to uncover security gaps that could be exploited by attackers.
- API Penetration Testing – Ensuring the security of APIs by detecting vulnerabilities that could lead to unauthorized access or data leaks.
- Network Penetration Testing – Evaluating network infrastructure for weaknesses that hackers could exploit to gain access.
- Hardware Penetration Testing – Identifying security flaws in hardware components that could compromise overall system security.
- Operational Technology Security Testing – Protecting critical industrial control systems from cyber threats and potential disruptions.
- Cloud Penetration Testing – Assessing cloud environments for vulnerabilities to ensure the security of cloud-based assets.
- AWS Penetration Testing – Conducting security assessments for AWS environments to detect and mitigate risks.
- GCP Penetration Testing – Evaluating security risks in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to safeguard cloud assets and infrastructure.
- Azure Penetration Testing – Identifying vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure cloud environments to prevent unauthorized access.
- Alibaba Penetration Testing – Ensuring the security of Alibaba Cloud infrastructures against evolving cyber threats.
- AI & LLM Penetration Testing – Assessing security risks in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) applications.
- Red Teaming – Simulating advanced attack scenarios to test an organization’s cyber resilience against real-world threats.
- Social Engineering Service – Identifying human-related security weaknesses through phishing, impersonation, and other social engineering tactics.
- Product Penetration Testing – Evaluating security vulnerabilities in software and hardware products before deployment.
- IoT Security – Securing connected devices to prevent them from becoming entry points for attackers.
- DevSecOps & Secure Software Development – Embedding security into the software development lifecycle.
Take Control of Your Cybersecurity Future
Don’t wait for a data breach to happen. Contact COE Security LLC today for a consultation and take control of your cybersecurity future.