Opulence.
Cybersecurity

Red Team & Social Engineering

Objective-based adversary emulation including phishing and physical scenarios, measured against your defences.

A red team engagement asks a harder question than a penetration test: can a determined attacker reach a specific objective, such as your finance system or customer database, without being caught? We emulate realistic adversaries across technical, human and physical routes, and we measure how your detection and response perform along the way.

The value is in the debrief. You learn which controls worked, which were bypassed and where the detection gaps sit, with evidence rather than opinion.

How we're different
  • Engagements are built around your real risks, not a generic playbook.
  • We work with your defenders afterwards to turn gaps into detection rules.
  • Safety is engineered in, with deconfliction, kill switches and evidence handling agreed up front.
Who this is for
  • A bank, airline or critical infrastructure operator with a mature security function that wants it tested against a realistic adversary.
  • A group whose regulator expects threat-led testing.
  • A company with a security operations centre that has never been measured against a live intrusion.
Signals you need this now
  • Penetration tests keep coming back clean and the board wants to know whether that means anything.
  • Detection tooling was bought and its coverage has never been proven.
  • A peer in your sector was breached through a route you have not considered.
  • Physical access to sites and offices has never been tested.
Scope of work

What is included.

  1. 01

    Objective definition

    Crown jewels, scenarios and rules of engagement agreed with a small trusted group.

  2. 02

    Reconnaissance

    Open-source intelligence on the organisation, people and technology.

  3. 03

    Attack execution

    Phishing, credential attacks, exploitation and lateral movement toward the objective.

  4. 04

    Physical and social scenarios

    Site access attempts, pretext calls and device drops where in scope.

  5. 05

    Detection assessment

    Timeline of what your defenders saw, when and how they responded.

  6. 06

    Debrief

    Technical narrative for the security team and an executive summary for leadership.

Method

Four steps, no surprises.

  1. 01

    Plan

    Objectives, scenarios, scope and safety controls agreed.

  2. 02

    Recon

    Intelligence gathering across people, technology and premises.

  3. 03

    Execute

    Attack chain carried out toward the objective with continuous logging.

  4. 04

    Debrief

    Narrative, detection timeline and hardening recommendations.

How the engagement runs

From first meeting to steady state.

  1. 01Weeks 1 to 2

    Plan

    Objectives, scenarios, scope, safety controls and deconfliction agreed with a small trusted group.

  2. 02Weeks 3 to 4

    Reconnaissance

    Open-source intelligence on the organisation, people, technology and premises.

  3. 03Weeks 5 to 7

    Execute

    Attack chain carried out toward the objective with continuous logging and kill switches in place.

  4. 04Week 8

    Debrief

    Attack narrative, detection timeline, executive debrief and a purple team session with your defenders.

What we measure
  • Time from initial access to detection and from detection to response.
  • Objectives reached against objectives stopped.
  • Detection gaps converted into rules after the purple team session.
  • Controls that held against controls bypassed, across technical, human and physical routes.
Who is on the engagement
  • Red team lead
  • Offensive security operators
  • Social engineering specialist
  • Physical security specialist
  • Engagement director
Deliverables
  • Attack narrative with timeline.
  • Detection gap analysis.
  • Executive debrief.
  • Technical remediation recommendations.
  • Purple team session with your defenders.
Engagement terms

Red team engagements are fixed scope and typically run four to eight weeks including planning and debrief. Standalone phishing and social engineering campaigns are shorter and scoped separately. We recommend a penetration testing baseline before a first red team exercise.

FAQ

Red Team & Social Engineering, in plain terms.

If you have detection and response in place and want to know whether it works, yes. If you have never had a penetration test, start there.

A small group who can stop it if needed. Everyone else responds as they would to a real attack, which is the point.

Yes, where in scope and legal, with authorisation letters carried by the team.

You get a detailed account of how, what was missed and what to change. Success for us is a clear picture, not an embarrassment.

Next step

Ready to talk about red team & social engineering?