A Tale of Two SOCs: Insights From Two Red Team Assessments

Summary

CISA conducted two red team assessments, highlighting stark contrasts in cybersecurity defense capabilities. Organization A failed to detect or contain the red team's activities, leading to full domain compromise and access to sensitive systems and cloud resources. In contrast, Organization B rapidly detected initial compromise attempts, isolated systems, and forced the red team into an 'assume breach' scenario, demonstrating superior incident response and detection maturity.

Full text

Cybersecurity Advisory A Tale of Two SOCs: Insights From Two Red Team Assessments Release DateAugust 25, 2026 Alert CodeAA26-237A Related topics: Cybersecurity Best Practices , Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience , Cyber Threats and Response Advisory at a Glance Title A Tale of Two SOCs: Insights From Two Red Team Assessments Original Publication August 25, 2026 Executive Summary The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) conducted simultaneous red team assessments at two organizations and observed different defensive outcomes. In both environments, the red team achieved full domain compromise and accessed sensitive business systems (SBSs) and cloud resources. Organization A failed to detect or contain the activity, but Organization B rapidly identified initial compromise attempts, isolated affected systems, and forced the red team into an assume breach model. This advisory details the red team’s activity and organizations’ defensive actions, offering lessons learned and mitigations to help critical infrastructure organizations strengthen detection, response, and protections in IT, cloud, and operational technology (OT) environments. Lessons Learned Untuned detection tools lead to missed threats. Without well-defined baselines and alert filtering, false positives and routine alerts overwhelm network defenders. Organizational silos and bureaucratic hurdles prevent effective incident response. Detection tools are only as effective as the people, processes, and procedures supporting them; fragmented communication, unclear responsibilities, and limited defender authority hinder effective incident response. Cloud environments are often an underestimated risk. Organizations often lack security controls for cloud environments and processes for responding to a cloud compromise. Key Actions Establish and continuously maintain a baseline and reduce alert noise by fine tuning. Break down silos and empower network defenders. Implement Conditional Access policies for workload identities and monitor for excessive or unused permissions. Establish and regularly review comprehensive procedures for detecting, remediating, and revoking access/refresh tokens in the event of a cloud compromise. Intended Audience Organizations: Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies; state, local, tribal, and territorial governments; critical infrastructure. Roles: System administrators, incident responders, defensive cybersecurity analysts, vulnerability analysts, network operators, security systems managers, and all network defenders. Introduction The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA’s) red team simulates real‑world malicious cyber operations to assess an organization’s ability to detect, investigate, and respond to malicious cyber activity. Emulating cyber threat actor tradecraft, the red team attempts to gain and maintain persistent access to an organization’s network and sensitive business systems (SBSs) while avoiding detection. CISA conducted two simultaneous red team assessments using similar tradecraft but observed different defensive responses. In one organization (Organization A), the team gained initial access to multiple workstations, gained elevated privileges over the domain, and moved laterally to SBSs and cloud resources undetected. In the second organization (Organization B), network defenders quickly detected the initial compromise and quarantined the affected systems. Because Organization B detected the initial compromise, the red team moved to an assume breach model, where Organization B trusted agents (TAs) provided access to a host that replicated the level of access the red team would have had if defenders had not detected their activity. From there, the red team escalated privileges and moved laterally to SBSs, cloud resources, and a bastion host in the OT demilitarized zone (DMZ), where defenders again detected activity and isolated the system. In coordination with the assessed organizations, CISA is releasing this Cybersecurity Advisory to describe the red team’s activity and the organization’s defensive responses and to share lessons learned that critical infrastructure organizations can use to strengthen their IT, cloud, and OT cybersecurity posture. CISA encourages critical infrastructure organizations to implement the recommendations in the Mitigations section of this advisory to reduce the likelihood and impact of malicious cyber incidents. Download the PDF version of this report: A Tale of Two SOCs: Insights From Two Red Team Assessments (PDF, 937.09 KB ) Technical Details Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix for Enterprise framework, version 19. See the MITRE ATT&CK Tactics and Techniques section of this advisory for a table of the red team’s activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques. Overview CISA is authorized—upon request—to provide analyses, expertise, and other technical assistance to critical infrastructure owners and operators and to provide operational and timely technical assistance to federal and non-federal entities, with respect to cybersecurity risks (see generally 6 U.S.C. §§ 652[c][5], 659[c][6]). CISA conducted two concurrent red team assessments: one at a Government Services and Facilities Sector organization (Organization A), and one at a Water and Wastewater Systems Sector organization (Organization B). During CISA’s red team assessments, the red team simulates malicious cyber operations to assess an organization’s threat detection and response capabilities. The red team attempts to gain and maintain persistent access to an organization’s enterprise network, avoid detection, evade defenses, and access SBSs (applications, data stores, or infrastructure components where compromise would materially impact the organization's operations, finances, or customer data) selected by the organization. For the assessments described in this advisory, the team also attempted to gain access to cloud resources and to demonstrate their ability to access Organization B’s OT systems without actually doing so. Organization A Red Team Cyber Threat Activity Initial Access and Active Directory Discovery During reconnaissance, CISA’s red team identified a web application with default credentials [T1589.001] for multiple built-in user accounts that allowed the team to send emails from an internal email address. The team used the internal email address to send phishing emails [T1566] and gained initial access to four workstations. From the workstations, the red team leveraged a modified BloodHound1 collector, customized to avoid static endpoint detection and response (EDR) signatures, to query and scrape Active Directory (AD) information. This information included AD users [T1087.002], computers [T1018], groups [T1069.002], access control lists, organizational units, and group policy objects (GPOs) [T1615]. The team found that one compromised workstation had the default Machine Account Quota (MAQ) of 10, allowing unprivileged users to add up to 10 computer accounts to the domain. The red team also queried the organization’s Active Directory Certificate Service (ADCS) certificate templates. Misconfigured ADCS templates are common and can allow low-privileged accounts to request a certificate on behalf of other users and computers, including highly privileged accounts. The team identified multiple templates with an ESC1 misconfiguration, which allows any user to request certificates for all users and computer accounts (see scenario ESC1 in SpecterOp’s Certified Pre-Owned: Abusing Active Directory Certificate Services). The red team exploited the misconfigured MAQ to create a machine account [T1136.002] and then exploited a misconfigured ADCS template to request a certificate for the newly created machine account [T1649]. They could then obtain certificates for any user account, providing means for lateral movement. Post Exploitation: Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement Sensit

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