Why Purple Teaming is the Missing Link in Modern Cybersecurity
This is where purple teaming has emerged as a critical approach. It takes the best of offensive testing and defensive validation, merges them into a collaborative exercise, and turns theory into practical readiness.
What Purple Teaming Really Is
At its core, a purple team engagement is a structured simulation of real-world attack techniques, directly aligned with frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and informed by the threats most relevant to the client’s industry. But unlike a red team, where the offensive operators work covertly to evade the defenders, a purple team is about transparency and collaboration.The red team executes techniques — initial access, defense evasion, credential dumping, privilege escalation, lateral movement, or data exfiltration — while the blue team actively watches, investigates, and responds. Each step is deliberate, starting with simple, obvious methods that any mature defense should detect, and progressing toward stealthier variations that challenge the limits of the organization’s detection stack. For example, the exercise might begin by dropping Mimikatz directly on disk when simulating T1003 – OS Credential Dumping, a sure trigger for most endpoint defenses. Later, the same credential-dumping objective could be pursued through memory-only execution inside a beacon, or via built-in system binaries that blend in with legitimate processes.
The point is not just to succeed or fail in the attack, but to measure detection depth, validate defensive processes, and help both teams learn in real time.
How a Purple Team Engagement Works
Purple team engagements are scoped according to the client’s goals and capacity. A smaller engagement might test 20 attack techniques across the kill chain, while a broader exercise could include 40 or more, simulating everything from phishing ingress to data exfiltration.The workflow is methodical:
- Planning and alignment – The engagement starts with a test plan, agreed upon with stakeholders, so there are no surprises. This ensures the chosen TTPs reflect not only common attack paths but also threat intelligence specific to the client’s sector and any initiatives the organization is prioritizing.
- Kill chain execution – The operators execute attacks across the intrusion lifecycle: ingress, execution, privilege escalation, discovery, persistence, lateral movement, collection, and exfiltration. Each step is logged, observed, and reviewed as it happens.
- Live collaboration – After each technique, the engagement pauses briefly. The blue team shares what they saw — or didn’t see. The red team explains what was done, what artifacts were left behind, and what the defenders could look for next time. The learning happens in the moment, not weeks later.
- Reporting and recommendations – At the end, the results are distilled into a detailed report: which variations were detected or prevented, where defenses need tuning, and how to prioritize improvements. For executives, this is summarized into a clear picture of strengths, weaknesses, and strategic next steps.
The Benefits of Purple Teaming
Operational Confidence
Security leaders often invest heavily in endpoint detection, SIEM platforms, and threat intelligence feeds — but the question lingers: does it all work together in practice? Purple teaming provides a live-fire test of that investment. It shows which alerts fire reliably, which rules are too noisy to be actionable, and which gaps attackers could exploit tomorrow.
Defensive Skill-Building
For the blue team, purple teaming is training in its purest form. Analysts don’t just read about adversary behavior in blogs or threat reports; they see it play out on their own network and get to respond under realistic conditions. The feedback loop is immediate, accelerating skill development in a way tabletop exercises never can.
Compliance and Regulatory Alignment
More regulators and industry bodies are recognizing the importance of testing detection and response capabilities, not just preventive controls. For organizations in financial services, healthcare, or critical infrastructure, purple teaming can directly support compliance objectives by demonstrating that defensive monitoring is not only in place but tested against real-world adversary tactics.
Cost-Effective Assurance
Full red team engagements are valuable, but they are also resource-intensive. Purple teaming offers a middle ground: a structured, repeatable way to validate defenses without the operational overhead of a months-long covert campaign. For many organizations, it delivers 80% of the insight at a fraction of the cost.
Tailored to Your Threat Landscape
Every purple team engagement can be aligned to the threats that matter most — whether that’s ransomware groups targeting your sector, supply chain attacks against your region, or insider threat scenarios. This ensures the exercise feels directly relevant, not theoretical.
Why This Matters Now
The cybersecurity environment has never been more dynamic. Threat actors innovate daily, weaponizing zero-days, abusing legitimate tools, and shifting tactics as soon as defenses catch up. At the same time, organizations are deploying more technology — cloud platforms, SaaS applications, remote work infrastructure — each creating new detection and monitoring challenges.In this reality, traditional testing isn’t enough. Annual penetration tests validate configurations, and red teams simulate adversaries, but neither guarantees that your defenses can see and stop attacks in real time. Purple teaming closes that gap. It measures not only whether you could be compromised, but whether you would notice it — and whether your team would know how to respond.
For executives, it provides assurance that security investments are effective. For practitioners, it delivers a roadmap for strengthening detection engineering and incident response. And for the organization as a whole, it creates a culture of collaboration where attack and defense are not in opposition but working together toward resilience.
Purple teaming is not a luxury. It’s becoming an essential practice for organizations that take security seriously. In a world where attackers never stop learning, defenders cannot afford to either.
Ready to Put Your Defenses to the Test?
At KPMG, we deliver purple team engagements with world-class offensive and defensive expertise. Our specialists are capable of bypassing modern endpoint defenses, evading logging, and simulating advanced adversary tradecraft — but just as importantly, we work side by side with your defenders to make sure lessons are immediate and actionable.Whether you’re looking for a focused engagement or a comprehensive simulation of a full attack chain, we tailor the exercise to your environment, your industry, and the threats that matter most. The outcome is not just a report, but a measurable improvement in your organization’s ability to detect, respond, and stay resilient in the face of real-world adversaries.
If you’d like to explore how purple teaming can strengthen your defenses, reach out to us. We’ll help you scope an engagement that fits your goals and provides clarity on where your security program stands — and where it needs to go next.
Jagjit Singh Sohal
KPMG Cyber Expert
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