# What is a Purple Team?

> Purple teaming is a collaborative security-testing approach in which offensive testers and defenders work together to improve preventive controls, telemetry, detections, investigations, and response.

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## Content

One side performs an agreed adversary behavior; the other observes what the environment records and how the defensive process reacts. They exchange context, correct gaps, and repeat the test until the intended outcome is demonstrated.

“Purple team” is an industry label, not a universally standardized team structure. It may describe an engagement, a phase within a red-team exercise, or a continuing way of working between existing red and blue functions. Creating a permanent third team is optional; the defining feature is a deliberate feedback loop between attack emulation and defense.

### Key points

- **Hypothesis:** State the behavior, expected control result, required telemetry, detection logic, and response outcome before testing.
- **Safe execution:** Use authorized scope, controlled accounts and data, monitoring, cleanup, deconfliction, and documented stop conditions.
- **Evidence sharing:** Compare operator actions with endpoint, identity, network, cloud, and application observations rather than relying only on alert status.
- **Remediation loop:** Assign owners, make changes, retest, and preserve repeatable test cases for regression checking.
- **Important limitation:** Highly scripted cooperation can validate known scenarios efficiently but does not reproduce all the uncertainty or creativity of an independent adversary.

### Related terms

[Red team](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/red-team/>) · [Blue team](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/blue-team/>) · [Detection engineering](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/detection-engineering/>) · [Security telemetry](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/security-telemetry/>) · [Adversary emulation](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/adversary-emulation/>)

### Sources

[MITRE ATT&CK: Adversary Emulation and Red Teaming](https://attack.mitre.org/resources/get-started/adversary-emulation-and-red-teaming/) · [MITRE ATT&CK: Purple Teaming Fundamentals](https://attack.mitre.org/resources/learn-more-about-attack/training/)

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