Creating a team made up of individuals with seemingly opposed objectives can be challenging. However, when carefully managed, creating space for collaborative conflict can be a magnificent driver of innovation and change. This is the heart of the “Purple” mindset.

In this presentation, we will share our process of humbly discovering ways to create and foster collaborative conflict during our research sprints and security exercises. Topics include team culture and structure, democratic project selection processes, research sprint planning, exercise planning, project deliverables, lab infrastructure, and attack and analysis automation. Philosophical discussions will be grounded with real-world examples from Purple Team research sprints and exercises completed earlier this year, such as multi-cloud lateral movement, CI/CD pipeline compromise, and attacks against hybrid identity systems.

We believe our experiences will help those interested in creating new Purple Team capabilities or further developing an existing practice.