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Federal agencies can strengthen cyber defense by looking for the paths an adversary could use before an intrusion happens—not only by responding to alerts after it begins. That is an offense-driven mindset in the defensive sense: authorized testing, adversary-informed analysis, monitoring, and remediation. It does not mean that agencies have blanket authority to conduct offensive cyber operations.
What an offense-driven defensive mindset means
Attackers choose when and where to probe a target. Defenders that focus only on known indicators or incident response risk seeing a weakness only after it has been used. An adversary-informed approach asks how an intruder might gain access, move through an environment, or reach a sensitive system, then tests whether existing controls would detect or stop those actions.
The distinction is between changing how defenders plan and test, and conducting operations against outside systems. The former can include authorized assessments of an agency’s own environment and realistic workforce exercises. The latter is not authorized merely by calling a strategy “offense-driven”; the cited CISA materials do not establish agency-specific operational authorities.
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| Approach | What it emphasizes | What it can miss |
|---|---|---|
| Reactive defense | Responding to alerts, known indicators, and incidents. | Weaknesses or attack paths that have not yet produced a visible alert. |
| Adversary-informed preparation | Testing plausible paths into and through systems, then checking whether controls detect or interrupt them. | It can become a one-off exercise if findings are not translated into operational fixes. |
The approaches are complementary: testing does not replace monitoring or incident response. Its value is in exposing gaps those everyday defenses may not reveal on their own.
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What authorized red-team testing can reveal
CISA’s 2023 red-team advisory describes an authorized assessment in which a team achieved persistent access and moved laterally, while multi-factor authentication blocked access to one sensitive business system. The example illustrates two things at once: a security control can successfully stop a particular path, while other parts of an environment still warrant attention. It is one assessment, not a measure of how often federal networks have these weaknesses.
CISA’s recommendations include improving log monitoring and conducting continuous testing. For an agency, the practical work is to review what the assessment showed, determine whether relevant activity would be visible in logs, and assign owners to address the findings. Testing without follow-through can document a weakness without reducing it.
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Depending on the findings, follow-up may involve improving identity safeguards, reviewing segmentation, or refining monitoring. These are not a universal checklist derived from one exercise; the relevant control depends on the access path and gap the assessment actually identified.
Read CISA’s red-team advisory.
Why workforce practice and collaboration matter
Offense-informed defense is also a workforce capability. Staff who practice both identifying weaknesses and defending systems can better understand how an attacker’s actions may appear to defenders. CISA’s President’s Cup uses real-world cyber challenges spanning defensive work, threat analysis, and vulnerability discovery. CISA’s workforce guide describes an entry-level offensive and defensive network operations course that covers U.S. government doctrine.
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The President’s Cup is a competition and training opportunity, not evidence by itself that federal systems have become more secure. CISA reported more than 1,000 individual participants and 200 teams in the inaugural competition in 2019; those are historical participation figures, not current workforce totals. The current competition overview says it is preparing for its eighth year, with PC8 registration opening December 1, 2026. Details may change; consult the President’s Cup overview for current information.
In a December 10, 2021 Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Cybersecurity Advisory Committee meeting summary, then-National Cyber Director Chris Inglis argued for taking the offensive in cyberspace in the sense of reframing what is possible and building collective defense across government, industry, and academia. That is a strategic argument for a more active, coordinated posture—not a blanket authorization for agencies to conduct offensive operations. The CISA meeting summary records the remarks.
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Where defensive preparation stops
Authorized testing must remain within the approved scope and environment. The PC7 rules, for example, prohibit unauthorized access, denial-of-service activity, and targeting systems outside the competition environment. They also define who may participate: eligible federal civilian employees, active-duty and reserve military personnel, and Service Academy cadets; contractors are not eligible under those competition rules. These conditions apply to PC7, not as a complete statement of federal cyber law or agency authority.
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How agencies can turn exercises into stronger defense
The test is not whether an agency ran an exercise, but whether it acted on what the exercise exposed. Leaders can connect assessment findings to operational outcomes by asking:
- Which findings create a material risk, and who owns each one?
- Would monitoring detect the activity observed during the assessment? What changes are needed to make relevant events visible?
- Did a control block an attack path, and are there other routes to the same sensitive system?
- Have fixes been verified through follow-up testing rather than treated as complete when assigned?
- Can teams coordinate across organizational boundaries when an incident or shared weakness requires collective action?
These questions make the work measurable within an agency: track remediation, verify controls, and assess whether detection and response have improved. The cited materials provide examples and practices, but do not establish a comparable government-wide evaluation showing that an offense-driven framing itself has improved federal resilience. A competition, course, or red-team exercise is evidence of activity and capability-building—not proof of a government-wide security outcome.
A CISA-hosted National Infrastructure Advisory Council report discusses international approaches that connect defense, deterrence, and offensive action as national responsibilities. It can inform discussion of governance models, but it should not be read as a description of U.S. policy or authority. See the NIAC report.
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