Red teams break in on purpose — safely, in scope and with permission — so an organization learns where it’s exposed before a real attacker does. The work lives in reconnaissance, exploitation, post-exploitation and reporting: prove impact, then hand the defenders a map of exactly how you got in.

Blue teams keep the lights on and the attackers out. They build the detection, harden the systems, watch the telemetry and lead the response when something slips through. Blue work is about trust maintained: predictable infrastructure, tuned alerts, and an incident-response muscle that’s been drilled before it’s needed.

Purple teams make red and blue actually talk. A purple operator runs a known attack technique and confirms the defense saw it — attack on one screen, detection console on the other — then feeds the gap back into better detections. Purple is a discipline, not a third headcount: fluency in both offense and defense, and a fast, repeatable loop between them.