Continuous Automated
Red Teaming (CART)

Red teams in cybersecurity are a group of authorized security professionals who simulate a potential adversary’s attack on an organization to test its defenses. 

In other words, red teaming involves emulating real-world attacker tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) in a controlled manner to identify weaknesses across people, process and technology, then report what worked (and what didn’t). 

Continuous automated red teaming (CART) is an offensive security approach that uses automated tools to continuously simulate real-world cyberattacks against a targeted environment and potentially defined assets.  

CART adds automation to scale the testing of traditional red team exercises to validate entire attack paths from infiltration to actions on objectives. This proactive approach to security testing involves regularly automating and simulating real-world attacks on an organization’s systems and applications. The simulations attempt to breach an organization by autonomously deploying attack techniques that penetrate and gain an initial foothold within the network. 

A red team is the offensive side in cybersecurity testing that emulates an attacker attempting to breach the environment, whereas a blue team is the defensive side responsible for detecting, responding to and mitigating attacks. 

In practice, a red team will execute stealthy attacks using adversary tradecraft, while the blue team works to defend, monitor, log, detect and respond. Together, they assess how effective the organization really is while under attack. 

Cymulate makes adversarial simulation simple to deploy and broad in coverage, so security teams can test real-world threats safely and repeatedly. You can simulate attacks with: 

• Easy deployment: Cymulate is cloud-based, accessible through a web browser, and requires only one lightweight agent per environment, eliminating the need for on-premises installation. 
• Network propagation: It simulates how attacks can spread inside the network to uncover critical assets and vulnerabilities. 
• Kill-chain coverage: CART tests techniques at every stage of the cyber kill-chain, from initial infiltration to lateral movement and actions on objectives. 
• Flexible testing: Security teams can use predefined attack templates or create custom attack scenarios to perform penetration testing at scale. 

Breach and attack simulation (BAS) and CART are two different approaches to security testing: 

• BAS tests the effectiveness of security controls against known attack vectors, while CART focuses on if and how an adversary can breach an organization’s defenses by identifying and safely exploiting vulnerabilities.  

• BAS testing is typically limited to specific areas of the network or specific applications, and CART testing covers the entire attack surface of an organization’s systems and applications.  

Organizations that combine these two approaches can gain a more comprehensive view of their security posture. 

This table summarizes the key differences between BAS and CART. 

The difference between CART and red team security testing is that traditional red team testing typically occurs as a discrete, manual, scoped exercise, while CART runs repeatable, automated and covers evolving attack vectors at scale. In essence, the difference is in timing, scale and automation. 

Where a red team engagement might occur monthly or quarterly and focus on a snapshot, CART is built to run repeatedly, catch drift, simulate evolving adversaries, test across the full kill-chain and deliver near-real-time insights on exposures. 

No, CART does not fully replace traditional red team security testing. While CART delivers continuous, automated validation of controls and identifies new or evolving attack paths, traditional manual red team exercises still bring value through deep, creative human adversary thinking, customized scope and strategic objectives that may be difficult to fully automate. 

CART complements and augments red team testing. It handles scale, frequency and automation, while manual red teaming brings human creativity, judgement and custom adversary emulation that automation alone may not replicate. 

Cymulate Exposure Validation uses CART technology to provide the following capabilities:  

• Reusable templates for baselining and ongoing testing 
• Land-and-pivot lateral movement simulations for accurate, detailed results 
• Customizable attacks spanning from infiltration to actions on objectives 
• Phishing assessments to run internal campaigns and measure employee resilience 
• Scalable testing across more environments without increasing staff requirements 

The difference between CART and traditional penetration testing is frequency, scope and automation:  

• Traditional penetration testing services typically involve a one-time assessment of an organization’s security posture.  
• Cymulate provides ongoing, continuous and automated red team security testing and assessments that validate entire attack paths from infiltration to actions on objectives.  

This allows businesses to identify and remediate vulnerabilities in real time rather than waiting for an annual or bi-annual assessment. The table below highlights the key differences. 

Cymulate supports both offensive (red) and defensive (blue) teams by improving efficiency, collaboration and resilience. Here’s how each group benefits: 

Benefits for red teams (offensive security): 

• Automate adversarial testing for higher efficiency 
• Run highly customizable simulations safely in production 
• Optimize and scale red team activities without extra headcount 

Benefits for blue teams (defensive security):

• Improve adversarial skills through continuous exposure 
• Increase collaboration and response readiness 
• Reduce time to mitigation with repeated validation cycles 

Benefits for all security teams:

• Maximize impact despite budget cuts and staffing shortages