Practical Purple Teaming: The Art of Collaborative Defense -- Alfie Champion, Paperback

Real-world threats demand real-world teamwork.

If you're tired of red team reports gathering dust--or defensive teams being left in the dark--this book is for you.

Practical Purple Teaming gives you a hands-on blueprint for running collaborative security exercises that improve detection, build trust, and expose real gaps before attackers do. You'll learn how to emulate adversaries using tools like Atomic Red Team, MITRE Caldera, and Mythic, and you'll guide defenders toward actionable insights using real logs, alerts, and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, the Cyber Kill Chain, and the Pyramid of Pain.

If you're running your first purple team exercise or trying to scale a repeatable program, this book will show you how to move from ad hoc simulations to a sustainable, integrated strategy.

You'll learn how to:

• Design purple team exercises that produce measurable improvements
  
• Emulate attacks using threat intel and adversary simulation tools
  
• Collect telemetry and analyze coverage using open source platforms
  
• Automate labs with Splunk's Attack Range and other free resources
  
• Build a sustainable, cross-functional purple teaming function within your organization
  

Whether you're red, blue, or somewhere in between, this book will help you test smarter, detect faster, and collaborate better.

If you've ever finished a red team engagement and wondered what actually changed, this is your playbook.

Author: Alfie Champion
Publisher: No Starch Press
Published: 10/14/2025
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781718504288

About the Author
Alfie Champion is a seasoned cybersecurity specialist who has fostered and developed purple team functions over the last decade, both with internal teams and while consulting with MWR InfoSecurity. Champion has delivered talks and workshops at some of the industry's most prestigious conferences, including BlackHat USA, DEF CON, and RSA.