It is not uncommon for films to depict a team, for instance, infiltrating a top-security facility, but such teams are real. These are professionals whose job is to evaluate the protective capabilities of structures and are involved in Red Teaming practice. Even though these are both types of ‘hackers,’ Red Teams are unusual in the profession because they breach physical security unlike the White Hat hackers who test computer systems.
What is Red Teaming?
Red Teaming involves acquiring the services of people, often in the armed forces or intelligence, to attack the sites of high security such as military bases or corporate headquarters. In search for weaknesses in systems, these members of the team will look for targets and shoot at them. Companies such as Leonardo a defense giant provide this type of service for government, defensive critical infrastructure and defense sector customers. The activities of red teams from Leonardo were discussed anonymously: their tasks were to evaluate security and the means needed for that were shared.
The Team Behind the Scenes Greg, heads the Red Team of Leonardo said that he has served in the engineering and intelligence branches of the British Army. These operations may entail a host of wide scale disruption activities, which include securing sensitive sites like bringing the business end of a nuclear facility to a quick halt. To begin with, they start with passive reconnaissance, which involves looking-up a target without the use of any active means. “We avoid raising our suspicions,” Greg says in regard to why they don’t occupy such devices such as smartphones and how they conduct their operations as they gather information.
Hostile Reconnaissance and Human Weaknesses On the other hand, ‘Charlie’, another member of the team and a former combat military intelligence officer also works on the analysis of satellite pictures or job ads and behavior of employees. Living as if passing through concentric rings of a target with regard to the starting point at its periphery and the center of major target its protective system’s focus being on constantly changing the external appearance and team members to utilize stealth.
Exploiting Human Weaknesses
Emma, a former RAF-trained psychologist, specializes in the exploitation of people. Disgruntled or unguarded people are the specific focus of her surveillance. ‘Let’s just say that a lot of people dislike following security rules,” she says. Not this. An unhappy employee could be the weakest link within the organization and present a threat. Emma has other strategies too, such as looking for an employee who is accessing the building and following them in or trying to use the high employee turnover to her advantage.
