Cybersecurity
OT and ICS Cybersecurity: A Practical Guide to IEC 62443
Industrial environments cannot be secured like an office network. A practical approach to visibility, segmentation and monitoring that respects safety and uptime.
Key takeaways
- Penetration testing is breadth-first: find as many exploitable weaknesses as possible in a defined scope.
- Red teaming is objective-driven: emulate a real adversary and test detection and response.
- Red teaming only pays off once vulnerability management and monitoring are reasonably mature.
- Purple teaming turns findings into improved detections quickly.
Two different questions
A penetration test examines a defined scope — an application, a network, a cloud tenant — and tries to find and safely exploit as many vulnerabilities as possible in a fixed time. The output is a prioritised list of weaknesses and remediation advice.
A red team engagement emulates a realistic adversary pursuing a business objective, such as accessing payment systems or exfiltrating customer data. It uses whatever path works — phishing, physical access, cloud misconfiguration — while staying stealthy. The output is an assessment of how well your people, processes and technology detected and responded.
Side-by-side comparison
| Aspect | Penetration test | Red team |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Find vulnerabilities | Test detection and response |
| Scope | Defined systems | Organization-wide, objective-based |
| Awareness | Defenders usually informed | Only a small control group knows |
| Duration | 1–4 weeks | 4–12 weeks |
| Frequency | Annually and after major change | Every 1–2 years for mature organizations |
| Prerequisite | None | Working SOC and vulnerability management |
When a penetration test is the right choice
- Before launching a new application, API or major release.
- To satisfy PCI DSS, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 testing requirements.
- After significant infrastructure or cloud changes.
- When you have not yet established a baseline of known weaknesses.
When you are ready for a red team
- You have 24x7 monitoring and an incident response process that has been exercised.
- Regular penetration tests find mostly low and medium issues that are fixed promptly.
- Leadership wants evidence of resilience against targeted attacks, not just compliance.
- You are in financial services and frameworks such as TIBER-EU or DORA threat-led penetration testing apply.
Purple teaming: the bridge
In a purple team exercise, attackers and defenders work side by side. The red team executes a technique, the blue team checks whether it was detected, and detections are tuned on the spot. It is the fastest way to improve SOC coverage against known adversary techniques mapped to MITRE ATT&CK.
Getting value from either exercise
Define success criteria before the work starts, agree rules of engagement in writing, track every finding to closure and retest. A report that sits on a shelf is the most expensive security document you will ever buy.
Next step: see how we scope and deliver penetration testing and red teaming, or read our guide on how to scope a penetration test.
Frequently asked questions
Is a vulnerability scan the same as a penetration test?
No. Scanning is automated and identifies potential issues; a penetration test uses skilled testers to confirm exploitability and chain weaknesses together.
How much notice should the SOC get before a red team?
Normally none, beyond a small 'white team' who can deconflict real incidents. The point is to test genuine detection.
Can red teaming disrupt production?
A well-run engagement uses strict rules of engagement, avoids destructive actions and has an emergency stop procedure agreed in advance.
NAZZTEC Editorial TeamWritten and reviewed by NAZZTEC practitioners. This briefing is general guidance, not legal advice.
