ATLAN TEAM
Choosing a red team partner in 2026
CISOs and security managers need vendors with specialized offensive security skills, not generic consultants. The right partner understands the threat vectors in your industry and can demonstrate mature tooling, senior-led delivery, and clear reporting that connects findings to business impact.
A strong red team provider will be transparent about their toolset and methodology, and can share sample reports so you can judge their rigor and decision quality.
Key factors to evaluate
- Domain expertise: Look for hands-on experience in your sector and an understanding of your specific risk profile.
- Technical toolset: Ask how robust and current their attack tooling is, and whether they develop custom capabilities or rely only on off-the-shelf scanners.
- Consultant pedigree: Ensure engagements are senior-led and not delegated to junior testers.
- Reporting and impact: Expect findings mapped to business risk and actionable remediation, not just vulnerability lists.
- Continuity: Favor teams that can support ongoing purple teaming rather than a one-off test.
No vendor excels at everything. Prioritize the providers whose core strengths align with your threat model, whether that is advanced AI exposure, OT complexity, or cloud-native systems.
The right red team partner becomes a strategic asset, helping you identify gaps before real adversaries do and building confidence in your resilience roadmap.
How to validate vendor maturity
Beyond credentials, look for evidence of disciplined delivery. Mature red teams can explain deconfliction, safe testing windows, and how they adapt when real systems behave differently than expected. Ask for a redacted report sample, a walkthrough of their engagement phases, and a clear explanation of how they measure success.
- Scoping discipline: A good provider translates business objectives into a clear threat model and rules of engagement, not just a list of systems.
- Operational safety: Expect explicit constraints around production impact, data handling, and incident response coordination.
- Engineering depth: Look for teams that can explain custom tradecraft, tooling validation, and operator experience in similar environments.
For a concrete benchmark, compare scope against Adversary Simulation and Red Team and view our methodology here to understand how these engagements are structured.
What strong outcomes look like
Great red team outputs do not stop at technical findings. The best engagements surface realistic attack paths, validate detection and response assumptions, and translate technical detail into business impact and resilience improvements. You should be able to answer: What did we miss? What would a sophisticated adversary do next? What changes should we prioritize this quarter?
When the engagement aligns to threat-led testing, you gain confidence that your most valuable assets can withstand advanced attack chains. A senior-led team should be able to map findings back to board-level risk, not just tactical remediation.