C-Suite Red Team Engagement Checklist: Strategic Methodology for Risk Mitigation

This checklist guides C-level leaders through the critical phases of a red team engagement designed to simulate real-world cyberattacks. It provides a clear overview of activities that test your organisation’s defences, uncover vulnerabilities, and support effective risk mitigation aligned with business priorities.

Key Phases & Activities:

• Engage & Plan Securely: Legal authorisation, resilient infrastructure, executive communication
• Intelligence & Reconnaissance: Deep OSINT, discovery of visible and hidden assets
• Initial Access & Weaponisation: Targeted phishing, SMShing, fishing, bypassing modern defences
• Network Entry & Expansion: Stealthy lateral movement and asset mapping with EDR evasion
• Active Directory Exploitation: Credential attacks and privilege escalation to critical assets
• Post-Exploitation & Data Exfiltration: Controlled mapping and exfiltration of sensitive data
• Command & Control: Encrypted multi-channel C2 mimicking real attackers, without disruption
• Evasion & Anti-Forensics: Advanced evasion and operational security techniques
• Documentation & Reporting: Executive summaries, compliance mapping, prioritised remediation
• Cleanup & Remediation: Removal of changes and artefacts, formal handover for risk closure
• Quality Assurance & Validation: Peer review, accuracy validation, environment-specific assessment

Note: This is an evolving list and will be updated frequently to reflect the latest techniques and best practices.