Red Team Penetration Testing Services

A red team penetration test is a security exercise that imitates a real attacker.

Instead of just listing every vulnerability, the red team starts with a goal and sees if it can reach it using real-world attack methods.

The objective may include gaining access to a critical application, reaching sensitive systems, compromising a privileged account, testing detection functions, or demonstrating how an attacker could move from an initial foothold toward a high-value asset.

NIST’s security controls distinguish red team exercises from conventional penetration testing and describe red teaming as an extension of penetration testing that examines broader security and defensive capabilities.

This makes red teaming especially helpful for companies with solid technical defenses that want to see if everything works together during a real attack.

A traditional penetration test usually looks for and confirms vulnerabilities within an IT environement.

A red team engagement begins with a goal and tries different attack paths to see if the team can reach it.

For example, a traditional external penetration test might identify a vulnerable internet-facing system and demonstrate that an attacker could gain access.

A red team might start with the same initial foothold, then test credential access, privilege escalation, lateral movement, security monitoring, endpoint defenses, and access to a designated high-value target.

This approach gives you a different perspective.

A penetration test can tell you what vulnerabilities exist and whether an attacker can exploit them.

A red team can show if your defenses can spot and stop an attacker who links several weaknesses together.

Tanner Security offers both services since each one addresses different security needs.

Even with big investments in firewalls, endpoint security, MFA, EDR, SIEM, vulnerability management, and employee training, a company might still worry about catching and stopping a determined attacker.

A red team exercise checks how all those defenses work together as a system.

Suppose a tester gains an initial foothold through a legitimate credential. The question then becomes whether your monitoring team notices unusual authentication activity, whether endpoint controls detect the activity, whether network monitoring identifies lateral movement, and whether your incident-response process triggers an effective response.

CISA has documented red team assessments in which testers maintained access, moved laterally, and attempted to reach sensitive systems. CISA uses those assessments to find weaknesses in monitoring, detection, response, and defensive controls.

A red team engagement gives leaders a real-world way to see if their company’s defenses actually work.

Tanner Security can design a red team exercise that targets the most important threats to your business.

External Attacker Simulation: The team begins outside your network and uses realistic reconnaissance, initial-access, and exploitation techniques to determine whether an outside attacker could establish a foothold.

Assumed-Breach Scenario: The exercise can begin with a limited foothold, such as a compromised employee account or workstation, and then evaluate what an attacker could accomplish from that position.

Identity and Active Directory Attack: The team evaluates whether an attacker can escalate privileges, abuse identity relationships, obtain credentials, and move toward administrative control.

Cloud Attack Scenario: For companies that rely on AWS, Azure, Microsoft 365, or hybrid environments, the engagement can examine identity, permissions, cloud resources, and trust relationships that could allow an attacker to move from one environment to another.

High-Value Asset Scenario: The engagement can focus on a specific critical application, database, financial system, sensitive repository, or other high-value assets.

Since red teaming is goal-focused, the exercise matches your company’s real risks instead of using a generic attack plan.

A red team report should tell the story of what happened, not just list separate vulnerabilities.

Tanner Security can document the initial access path, key attack steps, systems reached, defensive controls encountered, detection opportunities, response observations, and the exercise’s outcome.

The report also shows which defenses worked well and which need improvement, breaking them down into preventive, detective, and response controls.

Technical findings come with recommendations for fixes, while executives get a clear summary of the business impact and key lessons from the exercise.

Red team exercise is especially useful when a company wants to test its security operations center, SIEM, EDR, logging, detection rules, incident response, and escalation steps.

The goal is not simply to avoid detection.

The goal is to check if your security team can spot real attacker behavior, understand what’s happening, contain the threat, investigate, and recover.

CISA understands the importance of testing detection and response controls through red team activity and using the results to improve monitoring and defensive controls.

This makes red teaming especially helpful for companies that already invest in security monitoring but want to see if their controls really work together.

Today, attack surfaces often extend beyond the corporate network.

Companies rely on Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS, SaaS applications, remote-access platforms, identity providers, APIs, and other cloud services.

A red team exercise can check how an attacker might move between these environments.

For example, a compromised identity may provide access to Microsoft 365, which may expose more information or credentials. A cloud permission weakness may allow an attacker to access infrastructure that supports an important business application.

Testing how these environments connect can uncover attack paths that single assessments might miss.

Tanner Security can scope red team exercises across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments based on the company’s objectives.

Attackers use identity to dig deeper into a company.

A red team exercise can evaluate whether an attacker who obtains an employee credential could escalate privileges, abuse trust relationships, access additional systems, or eventually reach a privileged account.

Tanner Security also provides dedicated Active Directory penetration testing, which focuses specifically on identity and privilege risks.

A red team engagement can include that testing when identity is part of the bigger attack scenario.

Penetration testing gives the tester limited information and can mimic an outside attacker with little background knowledge.

Red teaming can also use a black-box approach, but what sets it apart is how much information is available to the team.

The main thing is that red teaming is goal-driven, simulates real attackers, and checks how your defenses perform during an attack.

A black box penetration test can focus on discovering and exploiting technical vulnerabilities.

A red team exercise can use similar techniques but keeps looking at the bigger attack chain and how defenses respond. Learn more about the difference between a red team pen test vs. standard penetration test.

Tanner Security has over twenty years of cybersecurity consulting experience in technical security assessments and offensive security testing.

Our broader penetration-testing services include network, web application, mobile application, cloud, authenticated, black box, gray box, white box, and PCI-focused testing.

This variety lets us design a red team exercise that fits your real environment, instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach.

Tanner Security is an independent cybersecurity consulting firm and doesn’t sell security products or licenses. Our advice is based on the weaknesses and gaps we find, not on selling products. We focus on hands-on testing, independent assessment, and practical guidance for fixing issues.

We understand there’s a difference between just testing for vulnerabilities and seeing if your business can actually defend itself against an attack.

This difference guides how we approach red team testing.

Red team testing often works best as part of a broader security-validation program.

Network Penetration Testing: Evaluate internal and external networks for exploitable vulnerabilities, attack paths, privilege escalation opportunities, and lateral movement.

Active Directory Penetration Testing: Test identity and access controls to determine whether an attacker could escalate privileges or move through the Windows domain environment.

External Network Penetration Testing: Evaluate the systems, services, applications, and remote-access technologies exposed to outside attackers.

Web Application Penetration Testing: Test web applications and APIs for authentication, authorization, session management, business logic, input validation, and other application-security weaknesses.

Cloud Penetration Testing: Evaluate AWS, Azure, and hybrid cloud environments for exploitable identity, configuration, and architecture weaknesses.

Social Engineering Testing: Test employee awareness and security controls against phishing, pretexting, and other authorized social-engineering scenarios.

Network Vulnerability Assessments: Continuously identify known vulnerabilities and configuration weaknesses that may provide attackers with potential entry points.

Incident Response Planning: Develop and test the processes your team needs to contain, investigate, and recover from cybersecurity incidents.

A vulnerability scan shows you what weaknesses exist.

A traditional penetration test shows what an attacker could exploit.

A red team exercise goes further by testing if your company can spot, contain, and respond to an attacker with a real goal.

Tanner Security can design a red team exercise that targets the risks most important to your business.