The best purple teaming providers for most security teams in 2026 are SpecterOps, for technique-by-technique detection testing that scores prevention, detection and telemetry separately; Mandiant, for intelligence-led exercises that pair an incident responder with a red teamer and end in a detection scorecard; and TrustedSec, for a guided program that focuses as much on teaching your analysts as on attacking your network. This guide to the Top Purple Teaming Providers In 2026 covers seven more firms, from managed security providers with fixed exercise tiers to UK and Asia-Pacific specialists, and explains what each one actually delivers.
This list is for SOC managers, detection engineers and CISOs who already run security monitoring and want to know whether it works against real attacker behavior. Purple teaming is different from a classic red team: the offensive side works in the open with your defenders, runs techniques step by step and checks each one for alerts, logs and blocks. We only included service firms that sell a named purple team engagement, and we compared their published approach, framework mapping, format and deliverables using the companies’ own service pages, datasheets and announcements. If you are still deciding between the two models, read our purple team vs red team comparison first.
Purple Teaming Providers At A Glance
Company
Headquarters
Best For
Purple Team Format
SpecterOps
Seattle, Washington, USA
Measuring detection coverage per technique
One technique per day, scored on prevention, detection and perception
Mandiant (Google Cloud)
Reston, Virginia, USA
Intelligence-led exercises with a scorecard
About two weeks of testing plus one week of reporting
TrustedSec
Fairlawn, Ohio, USA
Teams that want training built in
Five-phase program on detection, deflection and deterrence
Praetorian
Austin, Texas, USA
Turning red team findings into detections
Standalone or follow-on, optional detection engineering
GuidePoint Security
Reston, Virginia, USA
Live-fire tests of incident response
DFIR and attack simulation teams together, three phases
Secureworks (Sophos)
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Fixed-tier exercises with playbooks
Lite, Standard and Immersive tiers, two to five days
Packetlabs
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
SOC maturity and detection tuning
One-time or continuous, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK
IOActive
Seattle, Washington, USA
Choke-point and control review
Staged exercises, often within assumed breach scenarios
Claranet
London, United Kingdom
UK buyers needing CHECK and CREST
Goal-driven exercises with a detection gap analysis
Group-IB
Singapore
Recurring, threat-intel-driven programs
One to eight weeks, remote, on site or hybrid
Best Purple Teaming Providers In 2026
1. SpecterOps — Technique-By-Technique Detection Testing With Variant Coverage
SpecterOps launched its Purple Team Assessments service in September 2023 and lists offices in Seattle and Alexandria, Virginia. The service is built around one question: do your security controls actually detect and prevent what they are supposed to? Each day of the exercise focuses on a single attack technique chosen during the kickoff call, and the team runs a set of test cases against designated systems.
The detail that sets SpecterOps apart is how it picks those test cases. Its own material points out that a single technique can have thousands of variants, so testing one or two gives a false sense of security. SpecterOps uses a proprietary classification of technique variants to choose a representative sample, then measures how much variation each control tolerates before it fails. Every test case is scored on three points: prevention (was it blocked), detection (did it alert) and perception (was useful telemetry collected at all).
Open daily sessions explain each technique and why its test cases were chosen. Deliverables include a detection improvement roadmap and enough detail to recreate every test case later.
Best for: Detection engineering teams that want hard evidence of which technique variants their controls catch and which they miss.
Mandiant, now part of Google Cloud, builds its Purple Team Assessment from threat intelligence. Consultants first identify the breaches and threat groups most active in your industry, then create validation content that replays those groups’ tactics against your environment. Mandiant describes the work as a collaborative assessment that gives quantifiable evidence of security effectiveness, and it starts from the assumption that your security operations may not work as intended.
The exercises follow the attack lifecycle, from initial reconnaissance and compromise through privilege escalation, lateral movement and mission completion, mapped to prevent, detect and respond categories and to MITRE ATT&CK. Your team works alongside both an incident response consultant and a red team consultant. When activity is detected, defenders practice the response; when it is not, consultants help tune logging, monitoring and alerting.
Mandiant says the assessment generally takes about three weeks: two weeks of testing and one week for reporting. Deliverables include a scorecard of detection metrics, an executive summary, step-by-step technical walkthroughs, evidence-backed findings and longer-term strategic recommendations.
Best for: Organizations that want exercises driven by the threat actors targeting their sector and a scorecard leadership can track over time.
3. TrustedSec — Guided Purple Teaming With Training And Knowledge Transfer
TrustedSec, based in Fairlawn, Ohio, sells its purple team work as Adversarial Detection and Countermeasures, run by its Tactical Awareness and Countermeasures team. Red team consultants simulate targeted attacks, while your blue team works with TrustedSec experts to review whether each attack was detected, deflected or deterred.
The program has five phases: an initial assessment of your security posture, attack simulation, a collaborative review of detection, deflection and deterrence results, guided improvements with training, and a final report.
TrustedSec highlights that its consultants have worked on both red and blue teams. Deliverables include a findings report with practical recommendations, training for internal staff and help putting new defenses in place.
Best for: Security teams that want a hands-on coach as well as an attacker, and that value training their analysts during the engagement.
4. Praetorian — Purple Teaming That Can Build Your Detections For You
Austin-based Praetorian offers purple team engagements in two shapes: a standalone exercise of about three weeks, or a follow-on that replays a preceding red team or attack path mapping engagement with your defenders. The follow-on version starts by prioritizing findings from the earlier test and then walks through the same attack chain with your team, which is a practical way to turn a red team report into actual detection improvements.
The service has three components. Detection and response analysis looks for prevention, detection and response opportunities at each step of the attack chain, and Praetorian tests the improvements you make during the engagement. Controls validation simulates parts of the attack chain to evaluate controls such as EDR and attack surface reduction rules, as well as incident response plans, with MITRE ATT&CK techniques run as atomic tests. The optional defense enablement add-on is less common: Praetorian engineers write detection logic and response playbooks inside your existing security tools.
Best for: Teams that already have red team findings and want an outside firm to help write and validate the detections that close them.
5. GuidePoint Security — Live-Fire Exercises That Pair Incident Responders With Attackers
GuidePoint Security, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, runs purple teaming by combining two of its own practices: its digital forensics and incident response team and its threat and attack simulation team. The idea is to turn a tabletop exercise into a live-fire one, so your SecOps and incident response staff respond to real activity instead of a hypothetical scenario.
The engagement runs in three phases. In Prepare, GuidePoint sets objectives with your staff and reviews architecture, policies, procedures and the visibility your defenders actually have. In Facilitate, red team operators actively exploit a set of predefined techniques, while GuidePoint’s blue team works with your SecOps and IR staff to confirm what was detected or prevented. In Observe, the findings are compiled into a final report.
The report includes an executive summary, technical analysis with tactical and strategic recommendations, a record of red and blue team activity and training on investigation processes.
Best for: Organizations that want to test incident response procedures under realistic pressure, not only alerting rules.
6. Secureworks (Sophos) — Fixed-Tier Collaborative Exercises With Ready-Made Playbooks
Secureworks, the Atlanta-based managed detection and response provider that became part of Sophos in 2025, sells purple teaming as the Collaborative Adversary Exercise. Your defenders hunt in their own network with their own tools while communicating in real time with the Secureworks Adversary Group.
It comes in three tiers. Lite runs playbook tasks back to back over a day, with a collaborative debrief within 30 days. Standard spreads tasks over about a week so defenders have time to hunt and validate alerting, with live Q&A with the red team. Immersive embeds a Secureworks specialist in your blue team to coach analysts over five days using custom playbooks.
The red team runs one action at a time and shares timestamps, commands and tools, while you supply logs and detection records. The report lists every action with its ATT&CK mapping alongside your team’s notes and alert metrics. A Post-Remediation Exercise Replay add-on reruns an exercise to confirm fixes.
Best for: Teams that want a clearly scoped, repeatable exercise with fixed formats, especially existing Secureworks or Sophos customers.
7. Packetlabs — Detection-Focused Purple Teaming For SOC Maturity
Toronto-based Packetlabs lists purple teaming alongside red teaming and assumed breach testing in its adversary simulation services, and it is explicit about the difference. Red teaming asks whether an organization can withstand a realistic attack; purple teaming asks how to improve its ability to detect and respond. Engagements target specific defensive controls and detection rules rather than broad, goal-driven objectives, and run in shorter, iterative cycles.
Packetlabs works directly with your SOC and security engineering teams. The SOC watches simulated attacks in real time to judge alert fidelity, escalation paths and response, while testers validate SIEM rules, telemetry and whether EDR, NDR and identity controls work under attack conditions. Techniques are aligned to MITRE ATT&CK, and the firm stresses that gaps are fixed during the engagement rather than months later from a static report.
Engagements can be a focused one-time exercise or part of a continuous validation program, and detection and response times are measured and tracked across the work.
Best for: Mid-sized and enterprise SOCs that want to tune detection rules and response workflows in short, measurable cycles.
8. IOActive — Staged Exercises Built Around Network Choke Points
IOActive, headquartered in Seattle with a hardware lab there, offers a Purple Team Exercise as part of its red and purple team services. It describes purple teaming as offensive and defensive collaboration aimed at improving controls, visibility and response, with the red team working alongside the blue team throughout the attack.
The exercise is staged. Attack paths are planned for your environment, then defenders identify the controls and network choke points where attacker activity should be visible. The red team carries out each action methodically while the blue team checks whether that step was seen, detected or blocked, and the results are documented and debriefed.
IOActive also runs purple team exercises inside assumed breach scenarios based on real-world threats. Outputs include recorded TTPs mapped to MITRE ATT&CK for tracking and metrics, lessons learned for defenders and input for control tuning and incident response planning.
Best for: Organizations that want to map where attacker activity should be visible before testing whether it actually is.
9. Claranet — UK Purple Team Assessments With A Detection Gap Analysis
Claranet, the London-headquartered managed services group, delivers its Purple Team Assessment through its cyber security consulting team. Red team testers and your defenders work together in a goal-driven engagement, with blue team members observing and taking part in live attack delivery.
Engagements follow Claranet’s own purple team methodology and cover the full attack lifecycle, from reconnaissance to post-exploitation. Scenarios are designed around your threat landscape and can span infrastructure, applications, cloud and social engineering, across internal assets, the perimeter and cloud environments.
The deliverable is detailed: an executive summary, a full attack narrative, technical analysis, a timestamped execution log and prioritized remediation advice, plus a detection gap analysis that maps each technique against your detection capability and shows what was detected, blocked or missed. Claranet cites NCSC CHECK and CREST accreditation and says it delivers around 10,000 penetration testing days a year.
Best for: UK organizations that want a purple team exercise from a CHECK and CREST accredited provider with a technique-level gap analysis.
10. Group-IB — Recurring Purple Team Programs Driven By Threat Intelligence
Group-IB, which opened its global headquarters in Singapore in 2019, runs purple teaming with its offensive specialists working alongside your defenders while the attack unfolds. Testers run each technique, explain it as it happens and help tune detection and response in real time, using scenarios drawn from Group-IB Threat Intelligence.
The engagement follows six steps: collaborative planning, scenario design, controlled execution, detection and response validation, knowledge transfer and confirmed readiness. Each scenario is mapped to MITRE ATT&CK. Delivery can be remote, on site or hybrid, and engagements run from one to eight weeks depending on scope.
Group-IB recommends quarterly or monthly programs rather than one-off exercises, and the service can be bought standalone or through its services retainer. Expected outputs include validated controls, improved SIEM and EDR rules and refined incident response playbooks.
Best for: Organizations with a working SOC, especially in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe, that want a recurring purple team program.
How To Choose A Purple Teaming Provider
Is Your SOC Ready For A Purple Team Exercise?
Purple teaming assumes you have something to test: logging, an EDR tool, a SIEM and people who watch them. Group-IB and Secureworks both say their services suit teams that already run security monitoring. If you do not yet have those basics, a penetration test or a maturity assessment is usually a better first step.
How Are Techniques Chosen?
Ask whether techniques come from threat intelligence about your sector (Mandiant, Group-IB), from earlier red team findings (Praetorian) or from a standard playbook library (Secureworks). Also ask how many variants of each technique will be tested. SpecterOps makes the point well: one test case per technique tells you very little about real coverage.
Will They Help Fix What They Find?
Some providers report gaps; others help close them during the engagement. Praetorian’s defense enablement add-on writes detection logic in your tools, Packetlabs tunes rules as it goes, and TrustedSec builds training into the program. Decide whether you need recommendations or hands-on detection engineering.
What Does The Deliverable Look Like?
Look for a technique-by-technique record of what was prevented, detected, logged or missed, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, such as Mandiant’s scorecard or Claranet’s detection gap analysis. Our penetration testing report guide covers what good offensive reporting includes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Purple Teaming?
Purple teaming is a collaborative exercise in which offensive testers run attack techniques openly while defenders check whether each one was blocked, detected or logged. The goal is to improve detection and response, not to see whether attackers can reach a target undetected. Our what is purple teaming guide covers the basics.
How Is Purple Teaming Different From Red Teaming?
A red team operates covertly to test whether an organization can detect and stop a realistic attack. A purple team works in the open with defenders and focuses on improving specific detections. See our red teaming vs penetration testing guide for how both compare to a standard pentest.
How Long Does A Purple Team Engagement Take?
It varies by format. Secureworks’ Lite tier takes two days, Mandiant generally takes about three weeks including reporting, Praetorian’s standalone exercise runs about three weeks and Group-IB scopes engagements from one to eight weeks.
Conclusion
The right purple teaming provider depends on what you want to improve. SpecterOps suits teams that want precise, variant-level evidence of detection coverage, Mandiant suits organizations that want intelligence-led scenarios and a scorecard, and TrustedSec suits teams that want training built into the exercise. Praetorian, GuidePoint Security, Secureworks, Packetlabs, IOActive, Claranet and Group-IB each fit specific needs, from writing detections for you to fixed-tier exercises and recurring programs.
