Penetration testing checks whether a system has exploitable flaws. Red Team testing checks how far an adversary can get inside the company and whether anyone notices. Purple Team brings attackers and defenders together to tune detection. Each format answers a different question, which should drive the choice.
Buying the wrong test has a cost: the company receives an answer, but to a question it was not asking.
Pentesting: depth within a defined scope
A pentest can cover a web application, API, mobile app, or internal and external infrastructure. It can be conducted with no prior information (black box), some access (gray box), or access to the code and architecture (white box).
The strength of pentesting is its depth: a dedicated investigation of a system can uncover business logic flaws that require context, whether conducted by specialists or autonomous agents capable of testing hypotheses. Its limitation is scope, because the test covers only what was defined. The article Penetration testing: a routine to keep your company secure addresses recurrence, and autonomous AI pentesting changes that frequency, as shown in the comparison between autonomous AI pentesting and manual pentesting.
Red Team: a business objective with an open path
A Red Team engagement starts with an objective, such as reaching the payment environment or gaining control of the domain, and leaves the path open. Only two or three people know about the exercise, which lasts four to eight weeks. This format evaluates defenses without revealing actions to the operational team in advance: response time, detection coverage, and response effectiveness.
In Vultus's 2026 Cyber Risk Landscape, a study of 132 organizations, the average KillChain Score was 8.28 on a scale from 0 to 10. After initial access, attacks usually advance far. The Red Team Assessment guide details the phases.
Purple Team: joint detection training
In a Purple Team exercise, the offensive team executes a technique, the defensive team checks whether alerts fired, and both make adjustments together. This is the most efficient way to close known detection gaps, usually over a few days.
Because defenders know they are being tested, Purple Team exercises train them but do not prove defenses work under real conditions. That proof comes from a Red Team.
Detection is the most significant factor in this choice. In the M-Trends 2026, from Google Cloud, 52% of intrusions investigated in 2025 were detected by the organizations themselves; the rest were discovered externally.
What about internal attack simulation?
A fourth format starts with the access of an ordinary employee and measures what a malicious insider, or someone using an employee's credentials, could reach. In the Landscape study, credentials captured by infostealers accelerated intrusion in 21.4% of tests: in many cases, attackers enter with a valid login.
Which test to choose
The choice starts with the question the company needs to answer:
- Regulatory penetration testing requirement: independent pentesting, with documented scope and action plan.
- A new system going into production: penetration testing of that system.
- An attack surface that changes every week: continuous pentesting.
- Controls implemented, without proof that they work: Red Team.
- Red Team that went undetected: Purple Team to tune detection.
- Concern about those already inside: internal attack simulation.
The sequence also matters. Hiring a Red Team before vulnerability management is working usually confirms what was already known, at a high cost. A common order is pentesting, vulnerability management, Red Team, and Purple Team.
The three formats at Vultus
Vultus performs penetration testing, Red Team, and Purple Team engagements. When the same provider operates part of the defense, testing that defense requires separate teams and contracts, with documented independence. Explore the Red Team and advanced penetration testing and the resilience testing and Purple Team.
