This is one of the most common career questions in cybersecurity. And the honest answer most people do not want to hear is: start blue, then decide.
Blue team = defensive security. SOC analysts, incident responders, DFIR specialists, and threat hunters. You monitor alerts, investigate incidents, analyse logs, and build detection rules. Day-to-day work involves SIEM dashboards, Wireshark captures, and writing incident reports. It is methodical, detail-oriented, and — done well — genuinely exciting.
Red team = offensive security. Penetration testers, ethical hackers, and adversary simulation specialists. You try to break into systems — legally — then write reports explaining how. Requires deep technical knowledge of exploits, misconfigurations, and attack chains. The job market is smaller but the salaries are higher.
You cannot effectively attack systems you do not understand how to defend. Blue team work teaches you how real attacks are detected, what evidence they leave, and why certain defences fail. The best red teamers I have seen all have blue team backgrounds. They know exactly what the defenders are watching for — because they used to be the defenders.
Purple team bridges both. You understand offensive techniques well enough to simulate them and build detections for them. It is where I am heading — and where the most interesting cybersecurity work happens. My Active Directory attack simulation and the Pass-the-Hash detection work that won the Week 5 Award is exactly this kind of purple team thinking in practice.
Written by O.T. Nathaniel, AMICDFA, CCEP, CBTP — SOC Analyst & Founder of Cyber Nate