Red Team / Attack Simulation

Why Red Teaming Matters for Financial Institutions

Your organization doesn't only need to know what vulnerabilities exist. You need to know what happens when an attacker moves in. Annual scans and basic pen-tests only cover part of the picture. For money service businesses, banks, and payment processors, the risks are severe: wire fraud, account takeover, reputational damage, regulatory fines, and service disruption.

A full-scope red team engagement tests your people, process, and technology end-to-end: phishing, initial access, lateral movement, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and persistence. It verifies detection, containment, incident response, and executive escalation when it matters most.

Our Red Team Approach

We blend real-world adversary mindset with business-sensitive execution and highly transparent reporting:

• Recon & Intelligence
  We map your digital footprint, employee profiles, vendor relationships and technology stack to build realistic attack vectors.
• Initial Access Simulation
  Phishing, credential stuffing, supply-chain lures or chained exploits we ethically simulate initial intrusions in a controlled environment.
• Lateral Movement & Privilege Escalation
  Once inside, we attempt to escalate privileges, move laterally, and access high-value assets,  emulating how a motivated adversary operates inside your ecosystem.
• Objective Achievement
  Engagements are goal-driven: for example, manipulating a fund transfer, exfiltrating customer data, achieving account takeover, or simulating regulatory-evidence theft.
• Detection, Response & Remediation Validation
  We test how your SOC, incident response playbooks and executive escalation workflows respond. We capture metrics: time to detect, time to contain, missed opportunities for improvement.
• Post-Engagement Support
  You receive prioritized remediation guidance, an adversary playbook reconstruction, and optional tabletop or live incident-response training to strengthen your workflows.

Engagement Types

• Full-Scope Red Team – External + internal + social engineering + supplier testing; goal-based; multi-week.
• Blended Purple Team – Red and blue team activities in tandem to improve both detection and response in real time.
• Targeted Attack Simulation – A focused scenario for a single high-risk objective (e.g., fraudulent transfer path, CDE compromise, executive credential theft).
• Tabletop & Executive War-Games – Simulated incident walkthroughs for C-suite and board members to test decision-making and communications.

Deliverables You Can Use

• Executive Summary – Concise business-impact overview; board and auditor-friendly.
• Adversary Playbook – Step-by-step walkthrough of the attack chain: how we moved, what we accessed, what it means.
• Technical Report – Vulnerabilities, exploited vectors, proof of concept, logs, remediation steps.
• Detection & Response Assessment – Timeline of detection points, missed signals, suggestions for sensor and SIEM tuning.
• Retest & Validation (optional) – Confirm remediation.
• Tabletop & IR training (optional) – Live simulation for your teams, executives, and board.

Typical Scope (Example)

• External perimeter reconnaissance
• Spear-phishing and vishing simulations against targeted users
• Cloud credentials & SaaS platform compromise
• Lateral movement, privilege escalation within your environment
• Attempted exfiltration of customer, PCI or PII data
• Validation of log sources, SIEM rules, and EDR detection functionality

Why Financial Institutions Trust CyberCile

• Founder-Led & Hands-On – Our engagements are overseen by seasoned ethical hackers with real adversary experience.
• Financial Systems Specialisation – We understand payment rails, wire-flows, ACH risks, KYC/AML interfaces and regulator constraints unique to MSBs and financial firms.
• Practical, Business-Facing Reporting – Not just “findings”  actionable insight for boards, auditors and executives.
• End-to-End Validation – We don’t only highlight vulnerabilities, we test your detection, escalation and communication frameworks.
• Local Presence, National Capability – Based in Dallas–Fort Worth, serving payment processors, fintechs and banks across the U.S.

FAQs