Red Team / Attack Simulation

Why Red Teaming Matters for Financial Institutions

Security tools and periodic pen tests are useful — but they rarely measure how well your entire organization responds when a skilled adversary targets your environment. For banks, payment processors, and money-transfer services the stakes are high: wire fraud, account takeover, regulatory fines, and reputational damage.

A red team engagement tests your defenses end-to-end: phishing, initial access, lateral movement, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and persistence. It verifies whether detection and response, incident playbooks, and executive escalation actually work when it matters most.

Our Red Team Approach

We combine the mindset of real attackers with strict rules of engagement and business-first reporting:

• Recon & Intelligence
  We gather public and private intelligence on your footprint, employees, suppliers, and technologies to build realistic attack paths.
• Initial Access Simulation
  Phishing, credential stuffing, supply-chain lures, or exploit chaining — we use ethically controlled techniques to achieve plausible initial access.
• Lateral Movement & Privilege Escalation
  Once inside, we attempt to move laterally, escalate privileges, and reach high-value assets — emulating how a motivated adversary operates.
• Objective Achievement
  Engagements are goal-driven: fund transfer manipulation, data exfiltration, account takeover, or regulatory evidence theft. Goals are defined with stakeholders in scoping.
• Detection, Response & Remediation Validation
  We capture how your SOC, IR playbooks, and executives react — measuring time to detect, time to contain, and missed opportunities for faster response.
• Post-Engagement Support
  You receive prioritized remediation, an adversary playbook reconstruction, and optional tabletop or live incident response training to harden people and processes.

Engagement Types

• Full-scope Red Team — External + internal + social engineering + supplier testing; goal-based; multi-week.
• Blended Purple Team — Red team exercises paired with blue team collaboration to improve detection and response in real time.
• Targeted Attack Simulation — Focus on a single high-risk objective (e.g., wire transfer fraud attempt, CDE compromise).
• Tabletop & Executive War-games — Simulated incident walkthroughs for leadership and board members to test decision making and communication.

Deliverables

• Executive Summary: business impact, path to achievement, and board-ready risk rating.
• Adversary Playbook: step-by-step reconstruction of how access was gained and objectives achieved.
• Technical Report: vulnerabilities, exploited vectors, PoCs, logs, and remediation steps.
• Detection & Response Assessment: timeline of detection points, missed detections, and suggested sensor improvements.
• Retest & Validation (optional): verification after remediation to confirm closures.
• Tabletop & IR training (optional): customized exercises for IT, SOC, and executives.

Typical Red Team Scope (example)

• External perimeter reconnaissance
• Spear-phishing and vishing simulations against selected users
• Compromise of cloud credentials and SaaS integrations
• Privilege escalation and lateral movement inside the environment
• Attempted exfiltration of regulatory-sensitive data (PCI, PII, PHI)
• Validation of log sources, SIEM rules, and EDR efficacy

Why Financial Institutions Trust CyberCile

• Founder-led & hands-on: engagements are overseen by [Your Name], ex-IBM X-Force Red Team, with real adversary experience.
• Financial systems specialization: we understand payment rails, wire flows, ACH risks, KYC/AML interfaces, and regulatory obligations.
• Practical, business-facing reporting: reports your board, auditors, and C-suite can act on without technical overload.
• End-to-end validation: we don’t stop at technical findings — we test detection, escalation, and crisis communications.
• Local presence, national capability: based in Dallas-Fort Worth, serving regional banks, fintechs, and payment processors.

Case Study — Red Team for a Money-Transfer Firm (DFW)

Situation:

A mid-sized transfer company with strong investments in tools (firewalls, EDR, SIEM) wanted assurance their defenses and incident playbooks would stop a motivated attacker.

What we did:

Full-scope red team (3 weeks) including spear-phishing, supplier compromise, API abuse, and lateral movement.

Outcome:

We achieved objective (simulated fraudulent transfer path) in 10 days via a chained exploit that staff and tools did not detect in time. Post-engagement: actionable remediation roadmap delivered; organization improved detection and containment times by 65% within 45 days; next audit passed with evidence of adversary validation.

(Client name withheld on request.)

How We Work — Process at a Glance

1. Engage & Scope — Define objectives, ROE, and legal approvals.
2. Recon & Planning — Build adversary profiles and select techniques.
3. Active Red Teaming — Execute controlled operations to achieve goals.
4. Capture & Report — Document every step with PoCs, logs, and impact analysis.
5. Remediation & Retest — Prioritize fixes and revalidate closures.
6. Train & Harden — Optional tabletop or live training to lock in improvements.

FAQs