Red Teaming vs Penetration Testing: How to Build a Red Team in the AI Era

What is the difference between red teaming and penetration testing? A penetration test looks for weaknesses across a defined scope and ends with a list of findings. A red team emulates a real adversary toward one objective, by any path, and measures what your defenders detect and stop. In this Dark Reading webinar, independent security expert Tom Parker and Picus co-founder Dr. Süleyman Özarslan explain how to build a red team program that goes beyond the pentest: How red teaming, adversary emulation, purple teaming and breach and attack simulation differ What frameworks like DORA, TIBER and CBEST expect from red team testing How to set up an exercise: business sponsor, control team, rules of engagement and OPSEC Why to measure the time from alert to response, beyond what reached a log How to run red teaming when something changes instead of on a yearly calendar A 30/60/90-day plan to shrink the blind window from a year to hours Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:27 Pen testing, red teaming, purple teaming and BAS 06:57 DORA, TIBER and the CISA red team case study 11:55 Involving defenders and the business 16:09 Preparing an internal red team exercise 22:30 Staffing, agentic testing and lab environments 27:01 Scenarios, rules of engagement and OPSEC 33:18 Measuring detection, response and remediation 39:53 What changed in 2026: AI attackers move in hours 42:48 Why red teaming still runs on the calendar 47:50 Signal-driven red teaming 50:51 Adaptive validation: picking the right attack method 54:03 How Picus runs it on one platform 57:18 The 30/60/90-day plan 58:33 Key takeaways Speakers Tom Parker, Independent Cybersecurity Expert Dr. Süleyman Özarslan, Co-founder and VP of Picus Labs Moderator: Becky Bracken, Editor, Dark Reading See how Picus validates your defenses: https://www.picussecurity.com/schedul... #RedTeaming #PenetrationTesting #AdversaryEmulation