What is a Red Team Assessment and why does RBI endorse it?

When it comes to cybersecurity for enterprises, one sector that finds itself at a lot of risk is the banking sector. Banks conduct financial transactions which can be worth millions in value every single day which mean they present a very alluring target for a cyberattack. The frequency of these attacks on banks is only increasing and it is vital that banks recognize the risks in the environment in which they operate in. One potential solution is running Red Team Assessments.

Red Team Assessment is basically a mock trial of how well your people, processes, and technology are prepared to handle real-world cyber-attacks. In a red team exercise, highly trained security consultants attempt to breach the security of the organization to expose potential physical, hardware, software and human vulnerabilities.

Importance of Red Team Assessment

A comprehensive Red Team exercise will expose vulnerabilities and risks regarding

• Networks, applications, switches, mobile devices
• Social engineering (onsite, telephone, email/text, chat)
• Physical attacks (pen-drive bypass, camera evasion, alarm bypass, Wi-Fi attack etc.)

The purpose of red team assessment is to identify how real-world attackers can exploit major or even seemingly minor loopholes to breach your IT security. It is an effective way to showcase that deploying the most robust firewall would mean nothing if an attacker can tailgate his way to your data center and walk away with an unencrypted hard drive with critical business information.

These simulated attacks are conducted using highly advanced techniques to test systems for vulnerabilities and exploitable configuration errors. Unlike conventional attacks where a hacker only needs to find a single vulnerability, these Red Team attacks are comprehensive and can uncover all the issues in your cybersecurity defence, which can then be addressed immediately.

By simulating a false-flag attack, an organization can actually get a fresh perspective of their defences. While those who work within the organization may have a more structured and defined idea about their security measures, a malicious hacker may approach the task with a completely different point of view. By conducting a Red Team attack, a fresh set of eyes can analyze an organization’s defences and potentially flag vulnerabilities, which may have not been spotted earlier.

What does the RBI say?

In fact, even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), India’s central banking institution, has endorsed the use of Red Team Assessments. In RBI’s circular on June 2016, the institution called for a cyber security framework in banks and laid down a list of advisories to take. Under the Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Test and Red Team Exercises, this is what the RBI advised:

• 1 Periodically conduct vulnerability assessment and penetration testing exercises for all the critical systems, particularly those facing the internet.
• 2 The vulnerabilities detected are to be remedied promptly in terms of the bank’s risk management/treatment framework so as to avoid exploitation of such vulnerabilities.
• 3 Penetration testing of public facing systems as well as other critical applications are to be carried out by professionally qualified teams.
• 4 Findings of VA/PT and the follow up actions necessitated are to be monitored closely by the Information Security/Information Technology Audit team as well as Senior/Top Management.
• 5 Red Teams may be used to identify the vulnerabilities and the business risk, assess the efficacy of the defences and check the mitigating controls already in place by simulating the objectives and actions of an attacker.
• 6 Periodically and actively participate in cyber drills conducted under the aegis of Cert-IN, IDRBT etc

Organizations can consider Seqrite Services for proactively protecting their IT assets and to respond against cybersecurity threats. Apart from cybersecurity, governance & risk assessments, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Cyber Incident Response, Seqrite Services also offers Red Team Audit which includes Readiness Assessments, Red Team Assessments and War Games.

As an IT security partner for your business, Seqrite provides comprehensive security from advanced cyber threats. To know more