Organisations frequently misjudge security success by focusing on tool deployment instead of real-world effectiveness.
At Chaleit, we've observed this firsthand through our purple team engagements, where we work alongside clients to validate and enhance their security controls: CISOs and security teams are often praised for simply installing costly detection systems, which is a fundamentally flawed metric.
This disconnect between security investments and actual protection highlights a critical gap in many organisations' cyber defence strategies.
The wake-up call
Often, it takes a concerning discovery to prompt action. In one recent engagement, our red team assessment revealed significant vulnerabilities in a client's infrastructure — without their security teams detecting any suspicious activity. The discovery led to a broader question: if one route was vulnerable, what about routes B, C, D, and E?
This realisation triggered a comprehensive purple team exercise, focusing on controls validation and effectiveness assessment.
As Balaji Gopal, VP of Technical Services at Chaleit, explains: "No security control can be implemented perfectly; gaps are unavoidable. You must first assess your risk profile and determine your acceptable level of risk."
The power of practical experience
Through our engagements, we've consistently uncovered blind spots in areas organisations hadn't considered.
Traditional security measures often focus on well-known attack vectors while missing emerging threats. For instance:
Collaboration tool exploitation — Beyond email-based phishing, attacks now leverage platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Developer tool vulnerabilities — Public GitHub Postman API repositories frequently expose sensitive credentials.
Grey area attacks — While defensive tools might block one attack technique, variants often slip through undetected.
Think of security like learning to drive: you wouldn't want your first experience handling a dangerous skid to be when your life depends on it. Similarly, security teams shouldn't face their first major incident without practical experience.
Here's where purple teaming comes in, providing crucial hands-on experience through:
Realistic attack simulations. We execute carefully planned attacks that mirror real-world threats, allowing security teams to experience and respond to incidents in a controlled environment.
Alert refinement. Teams often discover their existing rules are vague or outdated. We help them write and tune alerts for specific attack patterns.
Playbook development. Through practical scenarios, we assist in creating and refining incident response playbooks that work in real-world situations.
Our engagement with a global energy firm shows the efficiency of this approach. Through systematic purple team exercises, the organisation achieved dramatic improvements: attack dwell time dropped from 10+ days to mere minutes, with near real-time detection of unauthorised access attempts. More importantly, their SOC transformed from passive to proactive security, demonstrating how hands-on experience creates lasting improvement.
Practical lessons from the field
We’d like to share several learnings that can help shape successful security operations across industries:
The right metrics. Successful purple team engagements focus on two critical metrics: Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR). These provide clear evidence of security improvement over time.
Iterative improvement. Progress happens in cycles: establish a baseline, allow consolidation time, then reassess with increasingly sophisticated scenarios. Each iteration closes more security gaps while identifying new areas for improvement.
Tool configuration mastery. Even expensive security tools often have significant blind spots in their default configurations. Regular testing and tuning are essential for optimal performance.
Alert intelligence. Many organisations struggle with alert fatigue. The key is developing focused, actionable intelligence rather than drowning in notifications.
Response readiness. Having incident response plans isn't enough — teams need practical experience executing them in realistic scenarios.
Recommendations for security leaders
Validate assumptions. Don't assume security tools are working as intended — test them regularly.
Invest in practice. Provide your security teams with opportunities to handle simulated incidents.
Look beyond traditional boundaries. Consider how modern collaboration tools and development practices might create new vulnerabilities.
Measure what matters. Focus on metrics that indicate actual security effectiveness, not just tool deployment.
Take the first step
Understanding your organisation's security posture requires more than a checklist of deployed tools. Chaleit offers a comprehensive security health check as an initial engagement, helping you understand where you stand and what improvements will provide the most significant impact.
To learn more about how adversary simulation can help validate and improve your security controls, contact our team.