What is Blue Team in Cyber Security?
1. Intro
People often associate the term cybersecurity with cool movie scenes of hackers staring at screens full of green letters while typing extremely fast on a keyboard. Of course, in real life, it is not really like that. Although almost everyone has heard of hackers breaking into the systems of large companies, not many people actually know who protects those companies from malicious attackers and what that protection looks like in practice.
Yes, I intentionally used the term malicious attacker, because in some cases, an attacker can also be well-intentioned. This will be explained later in the text.
2. What does blue team mean?
Blue Team represents the defensive side of cybersecurity. As mentioned earlier, malicious attackers are trained to break through and bypass security mechanisms. On the other hand, the Blue Team is trained to create and improve security systems, manage them, and respond to incidents in real time. In simple terms, the Blue Team represents the defensive side of a system. They are responsible for creating security tools, monitoring logs, reading alerts, analyzing suspicious activities, and actively responding to all of these situations. Of course, if an attacker manages to break into the system, the Blue Team tries to reduce the damage as much as possible and remove the attacker from the environment.
Some of the most common positions in these teams are:
SOC Analyst
System Administrator
Incident Response Team Member
Digital Forensics Analyst
Threat Intelligence Analyst
Monitoring and Detection Specialist
3. Blue Team Vs Red Team
At the beginning, a malicious attacker was mentioned, but it is important to understand that malicious attackers are not the only type of attackers. So, what other types are there? Red Team is a team whose job is to act like a malicious attacker in order to simulate a real attack scenario. It is a group of people hired by a company, who, with special permissions and authorization, test the resistance of the system and the work of the Blue Team.
Sometimes the Blue Team knows that the Red Team has been hired, and sometimes the test is done without prior notice, in order to realistically test the knowledge, alertness, skill, and reaction speed of the Blue Team.
So, the key difference is that the Red Team is hired and paid to perform an attack as a service, and in return they provide the company with a report about all the weaknesses and vulnerabilities the system currently has. On the other hand, a malicious hacker does this without permission and with harmful intentions.
4. The Most Important Areas of Blue Teaming
To better understand how they work, the most important areas and activities of the team will be explained below.
1. Monitoring and detection - is one of the basics of Blue Team work. The goal is to notice every suspicious activity in the system, network, applications and user accounts on time. All of this is monitored through logs, alerts, network traffic, login attempts, suspicious processes, file changes, etc. The main point is to detect suspicious processes or communication with unknown IP addresses.
2. Log analysis - Log analysis is one of the more important things in Blue Teaming, because logs often represent the first trace that something suspicious happened in the system. In them, different activities can be seen, for example who logged into the system, at what time, from which IP address, whether there were failed login attempts, and whether someone changed files or started unusual processes.
When an incident happens, logs help a lot to reconstruct what exactly happened. Based on them, the Blue Team can see when the attack started, which account was used and what the attacker did after entering the system. Because of that, regular monitoring and analysis of logs is very important for detecting attacks and reacting quickly to security problems.
3. Incident Response - Incident Response is an area of Blue Teaming that deals with reacting when a security incident actually happens. It is not enough just to notice that there is a problem, it is necessary to react quickly so that the damage is reduced as much as possible and so that the system can return to its normal state as soon as possible.
This process includes recognizing the incident, isolating the infected computer or part of the network, stopping the attack and removing the threat from the system. For example, if it is discovered that a computer is infected with malware, the Blue Team has to disconnect it from the network so that the infection does not spread further.
After that, system recovery is done, it is checked whether the threat has been completely removed and the system is returned to normal work. In the end, a report is usually written, where it is explained what happened, how the incident was detected, what measures were taken and what can be improved so that a similar problem does not happen again.
4. Digital forensics - Digital forensics is an area of Blue Teaming that deals with analyzing evidence after a security incident happens. It helps to determine what exactly happened, when the problem started, how the attacker entered the system and what he did after that.
Through digital forensics, different traces that remained in the system are analyzed, such as logs, files, processes, network traffic and activities of user accounts. Based on that, it can be seen whether the attacker changed something, deleted something, copied something or maybe stole some data.
The goal of digital forensics is not only to fix the system, but also to understand the whole flow of the attack. When it is known how the incident happened, it is much easier to prevent the same or similar thing from happening again in the future. Because of that, digital forensics is very important for serious analysis and improving system security.
5.Threat Intelligence - Threat Intelligence is an area of Blue Teaming that deals with following information about current threats and attackers. This means that the team does not just wait for an attack to happen, but follows in advance what is currently happening in the world of cyber security and which threats are active.
Within Threat Intelligence, new malware campaigns, known IP addresses connected with attackers, malicious domains, hash values of malware files, as well as tactics and techniques used by attackers are followed. This information helps the Blue Team to better understand how attackers work and in which ways they most often try to enter systems.
Based on this data, detection rules can be improved, suspicious addresses and domains can be blocked, and the system can be better prepared for possible attacks. Because of that, Threat Intelligence is very useful, because it allows the Blue Team to react smarter and to be one step ahead of the attackers.
6.System hardening - System hardening represents strengthening the system before an attack even happens. The goal is to configure the system as securely as possible and to have as few weak points as possible that an attacker can use. In that way, the possibility that someone can easily find a weakness and enter the system is reduced.
Hardening includes disabling unnecessary services, using strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication, regularly updating the system and properly configuring permissions. For example, if some service is not needed, it is better for it to be disabled, because every additional service can represent another possible target for an attack.
It is also important that users have only the permissions that they really need. If everyone has too many privileges, the attacker can cause more damage if he gets access to some account. Because of that, hardening is a very important part of Blue Teaming, because it helps the system to be safer and more prepared before an incident happens.
7.Vulnerability management - Vulnerability management is an area of Blue Teaming that deals with finding and fixing weaknesses in the system. Every system can have some weaknesses, whether they are in the operating system, applications, network services or configurations. Because of that, it is important that vulnerabilities are regularly checked and fixed on time.
This process includes scanning the system, finding vulnerabilities, estimating how dangerous they are and then fixing them. For example, if an outdated version of some software is used, an attacker can use a known weakness and get access to the system. That is why updates, patching and monitoring of software that is no longer safe to use are done.
Not every vulnerability is equally dangerous, so the Blue Team has to estimate what should be fixed first. Those vulnerabilities that can cause the most damage or are easiest to exploit have the highest priority. Because of that, vulnerability management is important, because it helps the system to constantly stay safer and less exposed to attacks.
8.Security Awareness - is a part of Blue Teaming that deals with educating users and employees. This is very important because the problem is not always only in computers, programs and systems, but often also in people. It is enough for someone to click on a wrong link or open a suspicious file and a serious problem can happen.
Because of that, employees should know how to recognize phishing emails, fake links, suspicious attachments and messages that look unusual. Attackers often do not try to “break” the system technically right away, but first try to trick a person. If a user enters his password on a fake page, the attacker can get into the system much more easily.
That is why the Blue Team has to work on educating people as well, not only on tools. Users should use strong passwords, be careful with emails and files, and report everything that seems suspicious to them. In that way, the chance that one simple human mistake leads to a bigger security incident is reduced.