Financial Entities Ethical Red-Teaming

Stakeholders The stakeholders within the red teaming exercises have different roles and corresponding responsibilities. Irrespective of role, it is important that everyone is aware that any form of testing is performed in a controlled manner, and that a communication protocol is agreed regarding the sharing of information among the stakeholders. The relevant stakeholders are: SAMA IT Risk of Financial Sector Supervision department - The authority that has primary responsibility for overseeing the Red Teaming exercise. The Member Organization - Each Financial Organization within the Financial Sector of Saudi Arabia and regulated by SAMA. The Security Operations Centre - The SOC positioned within the Member Organization, which will be subject to the red teaming test. The Red Teaming Provider - An external certified party, which has been selected to perform the red teaming exercise and provide required national or sector threat intelligence to define scenarios. Available Member Organization committees (e.g. Banking Committee for Information Security - BCIS) - Relevant results of executed red teaming tests, lessons learned, and threat Intelligence might be shared within this committee, in an appropriately sanitized form using the agreed communication protocol, to support the increase of the overall cyber resilience of the (financial) sector. 2.2 Required Teams For the execution of the red teaming exercise, the following teams should be established: Green Team SAMA IT Risk of Financial Sector Supervision department provides the Green Team. The Green Team appoints the Test Manager for each red teaming test. The Test Manager is responsible for guiding and supporting the White Team through the red teaming exercise. The Green Team approves the selection of Red Teaming Provider and provides - when applicable - additional or specific threat intelligence for the Financial Sector. White Team Within the Member Organization, the White Team should be appointed (including a White Team Leader), who will be responsible for the controlled execution of the red teaming exercise. The White Team consist of a limited number of security and business experts which are the only staff members that are aware of the red teaming test and who are the single-point-of-contacts (SPOCs), e.g. CISO. They will monitor the test and intervene when needed, e.g. when the test or results of the test are likely to, or have, caused a critical impact, compromise or service disruption. The overall number of staff members that should be involved in the engagement, should be limited to maximum five (5) people, to avoid a too wide disclosure of the intended cyber-attack simulation and - as a result - that the effectiveness of the exercise is limited or flawed. Blue Team The cyber security monitoring team of the Member Organization (e.g. SOC) which monitors and analyses the generated security alerts and events to identify security breaches or flaws. It is the task of the Blue Team to detect the malicious activities (of the Red Team) and to follow the agreed incident response procedures the moment an incident is detected. The Blue Team should never be informed about the test and are expected to follow their standard operating procedures, in order to simulate a realistic attack. Red Team The Red Team, a selected third party that executes the attack scenarios and consists of certified and experienced specialists. The Red Team will work with the Green Team and White Team to develop the potential threats and attack scenarios. The Red Teaming Provider is also responsible for providing the latest threat intelligence related to the Financial Sector in order to achieve a certain level of assurance that the Member Organization is tested against the latest known (sophisticated) cyber-attacks. Please refer to Appendix A-Requirements for Red Teaming provider , for more details on Red Teaming provider requirements.