As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated and frequent, mature organizations are building internal red teams to enhance their security postures. But even the most elite internal red teams face an impossible equation: an unlimited attack surface and an evolving threat landscape versus 40 hours a week to keep up with all the changes.

This isn’t a reflection on their capabilities—it’s the reality of modern cybersecurity. Internal red teamers must simultaneously stay up to date with new vulnerabilities, conduct simulations on new and existing attack surfaces, and report and act on the findings. Even with a sizeable red team, the constraint of limited hours in a day inevitably leaves some gaps that attackers can exploit.

The solution lies in leveraging crowdsourcing to close this gap. Bugcrowd recently launched Red Team as a Service (RTaaS), the first solution that brings the scale and agility of crowdsourcing to red teaming. RTaaS can enhance and amplify the work of internal red teams through two key use cases: providing assurance through external validation and augmenting the efforts of internal red teams.

Using RTaaS for independent validation

Growing organizations often need third-party validation of their security postures (i.e., through an asset attestation document) to satisfy external requirements, such as regulatory compliance.

These frequently require organizations to go beyond simple pen testing, especially if they’re handling sensitive data. For example, financial institutions may use red teaming to comply with frameworks such as CBEST, AAS, and iCAST.

Beyond regulatory compliance, external validation is essential when forging new business relationships. Stakeholders—customers, suppliers, investors, and regulators—want proof of an organization’s security best practices before partnering with them. An attestation from a third-party provider can demonstrate that organizations are taking the necessary security precautions, increasing stakeholder trust. This requirement also extends to other business operations, such as cybersecurity insurance, where a provider might require a red team attestation before extending coverage.

Bugcrowd’s Assured RTaaS offering can provide this assurance by combining traditional red teaming methodology with crowdsourced expertise to deliver independent, thorough validation. This helps organizations meet external compliance and stakeholder requirements while still improving their overall security postures.

For instance, if you’re a CTO of a fast-growing startup, you want peace of mind that your customer data is secure, your application functions are without downtime, and your infrastructure can’t be easily compromised. By leveraging our Assured RTaaS offering, you gain a fresh perspective on how attackers might compromise your technology, people, processes, data, and more. Other benefits include the following:

• Customized engagement — Instead of a generic assessment, you can customize a red team engagement for your specific needs by specifying the key scenario(s) you want to simulate.
• Organizational alignment — In addition to external assurance, security leaders can leverage the insights from an assessment to benchmark their organizations’ security performance and align the team on a security roadmap.

Here’s a breakdown of how the Assured offering works:

• Engagement kickoff — Organizations work with Bugcrowd to customize an assessment’s scope to address their specific security risks and the concerns of key stakeholders. Example focus areas include infrastructure vulnerabilities, personnel security, or supply chain exposures.
• Full-spectrum simulation — In the assessment, the Red Team completes a full-spectrum attack simulation (including the “In,” “Through,” and “Out” phases) while collaborating closely with a designated control group (usually security leaders or regulators).
• Findings and debrief — After completing the exercise, the Red Team compiles a report that can be used for attestation, as well as a debrief to review the findings and discuss remediation approaches.

In summary, Bugcrowd’s Assured RTaaS helps you validate your internal red team’s efforts by simulating real-world attacker behavior with precision from an outside-in perspective. It is ideal for organizations wanting to evolve control effectiveness and build cyber resilience.

Augmenting internal red teams with RTaaS

As organizations grow, their internal red teams face an asymmetric battle against time and scope. Every new application, employee, device, or system creates another potential entry point for attackers. Over time, this can introduce security gaps.

For example, if your red team is only experienced with specific security tools (e.g., Sliver C2), it is limited by that tool’s capabilities and detection signatures when conducting attacks. To enhance the team’s collective repertoire, team members could learn to use other tools (e.g., Nighthawk or Cobalt Strike). However, mastering new tools and developing the capabilities to make their use undetectable takes time, which can delay exercise timelines and time to remediation.

Bugcrowd’s Continuous “In-Phase” RTaaS model eliminates this tradeoff by augmenting internal red teams without replacing their strategic role. In this model, organizations can leverage crowdsourced expertise to scale up or down a team of operators who handle initial system access (typically the most time-consuming and resource-intensive phase of red team assessments). This approach provides continuous monitoring of potential entry points before attackers can exploit them.

For instance, if you’re a red team manager at a global tech company, you face an ever-expanding attack surface (as the organization and its tech stack grow) and a stretched red team (running all phases of internal operations). Your team needs additional support to continuously monitor these surfaces and identify weaknesses, which can be prioritized and investigated by your internal team. This enables your team to work efficiently without burning out or compromising security outcomes. Other benefits include the following:

• Mirror real-world operations — The Bugcrowd Red Team mimics initial access brokers, attackers who profit by gaining remote access to corporate networks and selling it to others. By tapping into the power of the crowd, organizations can have hundreds of eyes on their systems, mirroring how thousands of initial access brokers are targeting their networks.
• Cost-effective scaling — Hiring additional full-time operators is time-intensive and costly. With the Continuous RTaaS offering, organizations can access on-demand red team expertise while only paying for successful results. This enables organizations to scale their security programs efficiently.
• Knowledge transfer — Collaborating with an external red team can help expand your internal red team’s knowledge and skill set, such as by sharing new experiences or new tools and technologies. This knowledge exchange boosts your internal red team’s overall capabilities, directly improving your organization’s security outcomes.

Here’s how the Continuous “In-Phase” offering works in practice:

• Engagement kickoff — Similar to the Assured offering, an engagement starts with aligning goals and scope, ensuring that the exercise addresses any known risks and potential attack vectors that are top of mind.
• Initial access attempts — Groups of vetted operators conduct the “in” phase of the exercise, where they attempt to bypass security controls and gain initial access using their specialized skill set and experience. They have two weeks to get in, if they do. Similar to a private bug bounty program, operators receive rewards from a total reward pool based on the success, impact, and stealth of each approved plan and then rotate to a different team. If they don’t get in, they rotate to a different team after two weeks.
• Handoff and attack execution — The access gained is then provided to your internal red team who uses it to simulate the rest of the attack (i.e., the “Through” and “Out” phases) and document the findings and remediation steps. This handoff can occur through infrastructure Bugcrowd, a customer, or a researcher has set up and through knowledge-sharing sessions.

A comparison table of how organizations can leverage the Blended and Assured RTaaS offerings to augment their internal red teams.

Your red team can also be augmented using our Continuous “Through-Phase” operations, where your internal teams can focus on getting in and Bugcrowd can focus on the internal network and achieving objectives.

In summary, there are many flexible ways to partner with Bugcrowd to augment your internal red team. Bugcrowd’s Continuous RTaaS offering is the most common method, which helps organizations outsource the “in-phase” of an exercise, leaving internal teams with the bandwidth to focus on their internal network.

Unlock your internal red team’s full potential

Even with a talented internal red team, staying ahead of attackers remains a persistent challenge—but it’s not insurmountable.

As attackers evolve their tactics faster than internal red teams can adapt, organizations struggle to stay ahead of emerging threats. This isn’t a reflection of a red team’s capabilities but a reality of modern cybersecurity. However, with Bugcrowd’s RTaaS, organizations can strategically enhance their internal red teams, whether through the Assured offering for external validation or the Continuous offering to augment their internal red teams.

Ready to strengthen your red team? Request a quote.