Red Teaming a Pharmaceuticals & Biotech Company
The Challenge
The company had invested heavily in a security operations center, endpoint detection, and identity controls, but had never measured how those defenses would fare against a determined adversary targeting its research pipeline and clinical data.
Leadership wanted an honest answer to three questions: could an attacker reach research systems, how long would it take, and would anyone notice before the objective was met?
“Their red team reached our research systems in under two weeks, and not one alert fired. Instead of a scare, we got a timeline, tuned detections, and a retest that proved the path was closed. It is the only offensive security work I have put in front of our board.”
The Execution
Define
We agreed on objectives covering research file shares, lab instrument networks, and the clinical data platform, plus rules of engagement and a small trusted contact group.
Operate
A targeted phishing campaign delivered a foothold. The team escalated through misconfigured identity federation and moved laterally to research systems inside two weeks.
Debrief
The full timeline was mapped against SOC telemetry, showing that no alert fired at any stage. The gaps sat in identity monitoring and lateral movement detection.
Rebuild
In purple team sessions we built and tested new detections with the blue team, then re-ran the same techniques until each one fired and was actioned.
The Outcome
The company gained an evidence-based picture of real exposure and closed the identity and lateral movement blind spots the operation exposed. The retest confirmed the original attack path no longer works.
The engagement is now an annual exercise, and its report became the security section of the board's risk briefing.