How to Run a Purple Team Exercise: A Step-by-Step Guide
Key takeaways
- A purple team exercise is red and blue working together to measure and improve detection - not a competition.
- Scope it around specific MITRE ATT&CK techniques, not vague goals.
- Run each technique, then check whether the blue team detected it and why or why not.
- Every gap becomes a concrete detection-engineering action item.
- Measure improvement by re-running the same techniques after fixes.
A purple team exercise has one purpose: to find out whether your defenses actually detect real attacker behavior, and to fix the gaps. Unlike a red team engagement, nothing is hidden - the red and blue sides work in the open, together.
What is a purple team exercise?
It is a collaborative session where an offensive operator executes specific adversary techniques while the defensive team watches their tooling to see what fires. The output is not "we won" - it is a prioritized list of detection gaps and improvements.
Step 1 - Pick techniques, not vibes
Anchor the exercise to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Choose a small set of techniques relevant to your threat model, for example:
- Credential dumping
- Lateral movement over SMB
- Persistence via scheduled tasks
A focused exercise of five techniques beats an unfocused "try to break in" day.
Step 2 - Plan and set the rules
Agree on scope, the target environment, timing, and a communication channel so both sides share what they are doing in real time. Use a lab or staging environment so production is never at risk.
Step 3 - Execute one technique at a time
The red operator runs a technique. Immediately, the blue team checks: did an alert fire? Was the event even logged? Could an analyst have caught it? Record the answer before moving on.
| Outcome | What it means |
|---|---|
| Detected & alerted | Detection works - verify it is tuned |
| Logged, not alerted | Data exists; build a detection rule |
| Not logged at all | Visibility gap; fix logging first |
Step 4 - Turn gaps into detection engineering
Every missed technique becomes an action item: add a log source, write a SIEM rule, or tune an existing one. This is where a purple team exercise creates lasting value.
Step 5 - Re-test and measure
After the blue team ships fixes, re-run the same techniques. Improvement is measurable: techniques that were invisible last week now fire alerts. That delta is the entire point.
Practice it hands-on
You can rehearse this whole loop safely on Purple Edge - run attacker techniques against lab targets, inspect the telemetry they generate, and build the detections that catch them.
Ready to practice? Explore the Learn Purple Teaming path.
Put this into practice
Spin up real Kali, Ubuntu and Windows labs in your browser and learn by doing. Guided, hands-on, no setup.