Incident response (IR) plans are a cornerstone of organisational resilience. Many businesses maintain policies, run tabletop exercises, and document procedures, but high-impact incidents still expose gaps in real-world response.
Red team exercises provide a practical, objective-driven way to test incident response readiness. Red teaming is often viewed as the most advanced form of security testing, a realistic simulation of how an attacker might gain access, move through your environment, and reach critical assets. By simulating the actions of a motivated attacker, red teams reveal how well people, processes, and technology perform under pressure, highlighting both technical and non-technical weaknesses.
This article explains how to design and use red team exercises specifically to test incident response readiness, with practical examples and actionable insights.
Define clear incident response objectives
Red teaming assesses how people, processes, and technology behave under realistic conditions, and whether the organisation can prevent, detect, and respond to a motivated threat actor. Before launching a red team engagement, it’s essential to define what you want to test. For incident response readiness, objectives should focus on organisational resilience, not only technical compromise.
Examples of exercise objectives include:
- Detecting and containing intrusions within a set timeframe
- Escalating incidents to the correct teams according to policy
- Coordinating across IT, HR, legal, communications, and leadership
- Maintaining critical business operations during disruption
Objectives shape scenarios and ensure that the exercise evaluates the effectiveness of your incident response plan in practice.
Design realistic attack scenarios
Red team exercises work best when scenarios replicate the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of actual adversaries. Many organisations use the MITRE ATT&CK framework as a reference point when designing red team operations, ensuring scenarios are grounded in observed attacker techniques rather than theoretical risks. For incident response testing, scenarios stress both technical and organisational response:
- Data breach simulation: A red team exfiltrates sensitive data while monitoring how the SOC detects, escalates, and reports the incident.
- AI-enabled social engineering: Phishing campaigns or executive impersonation assess employee awareness and escalation processes.
- Multi-vector attacks: Combining IT, OT, and physical security compromises to measure cross-functional coordination.
Red teaming delivers more than an attacker narrative. When results are documented clearly and mapped to objectives and performance targets, they provide credible assurance evidence, helping organisations understand how effectively they can detect, contain, and recover from real incidents, and improve their IR readiness.
Measure key incident response metrics
To understand incident response readiness, metrics should capture speed, accuracy, and effectiveness:
- Detection Time (MTTD): How quickly is an intrusion identified?
- Response Time (MTTR): How long does it take to contain, mitigate, and restore services?
- Escalation Accuracy: Were incidents routed to the right teams without delay?
- Decision Quality: Did leadership make timely and effective decisions under pressure?
- Communication Effectiveness: Did teams share clear, actionable information internally and externally?
Metrics help quantify readiness, highlight gaps, and track improvements over time.
Evaluate cross-functional coordination
A red team assessment looks at systems, people, and processes together. This means findings often highlight where controls are working effectively, not just where gaps exist. For leadership teams and auditors, this is valuable assurance that the security programme is maturing in the right direction. Red team scenarios which test incident preparedness should involve stakeholders across business areas such as:
- IT and security for technical containment
- Legal and compliance for regulatory considerations
- HR for insider threats or personnel issues
- Communications for customer and media messaging
- Leadership for strategic decision-making
Scenarios that simulate stress across these departments reveal gaps in responsibility, authority, and clarity of command.
Test recovery and continuity processes
While narrative is important, red team outcomes should not be reduced to a dramatic walkthrough. Clear evidence, traceability, and alignment to business priorities are what make results useful for assurance. Effective IR testing should examine:
- System restoration under pressure
- Backup and recovery effectiveness
- Continuity of critical business operations
- Coordination with suppliers or external partners
Red team exercises measure not only if an attack can be stopped, but also if the organisation can maintain or quickly restore normal operations. This aligns with guidance from the NCSC on effective incident management, which emphasises recovery, continuity, and coordinated response.
Use findings to drive continuous improvement
The value of red team exercises comes from applying what’s learned:
- Update incident response plans with lessons from the exercise
- Train staff on identified gaps and reinforce processes
- Track remediation and retest to validate improvements
- Share findings with leadership to inform strategic decisions
A single red team assessment offers a snapshot in time. Organisations get the most value when red teaming forms part of a wider programme, supported by retesting and measurement of improvement to incident response activities.
How can Sentrium help your organisation?
Most organisations have theoretical models of risk, such as scenarios described during audits, or assumptions about the strength of certain controls. A red team exercise challenges assumptions by demonstrating what an attacker can actually achieve, given time, skill, and access, and replicating the TTPs used by real threat actors.
At Sentrium, our red team exercises combine technical expertise with an objectives-driven approach to help organisations:
- Validate and improve incident response plans
- Identify gaps across people, processes, and technology
- Demonstrate resilience through realistic adversary simulation
Ready to understand how your organisation responds under real-world conditions? Our red team exercises simulate realistic attacks to test your incident response, uncover gaps, and provide actionable guidance for improvement. Get in touch to plan your exercise.
