The Most Important Skills To Be On A Black Team

If you want to break into high security buildings for a living, get paid for it and do it professionally where you will hopefully get away, what are the most important skills to have?

Is it the ability to pick any lock quickly, or perhaps knowing how to bypass a state-of-the-art alarm system without triggering a single alert? Maybe it’s the art of elicitation—skillfully extracting information from unsuspecting people without them realizing what's happening.

These skills are undeniably important, but when it comes to being on a Black Team, conducting a physical penetration test, these are the skills that make you a specialist but not the foundational ones.

I have run many black teams all over the world, and i have no problem at all having teammates who aren’t good at lockpicking, social engineering, breaching, etc but every teammate must have the skills listed below to be on the team.

The Men and the Machines

When you are deciding how to break into a facility, one of the first questions you will be faced with is do you want to fight the men or the machines?

Break in during the day, and you will be dealing with people, social engineering them in order to bypass systems and gain access to this or that. In many situations being able to blend into a large environment makes infiltration easier but there are many instances where daytime engagements become much harder.

• What if the location only has 4 or 5 employees making blending in impossible?

• What if daytime security is extremely high

• What if the facility is unmanned and any daytime presence is suspicious

• etc etc

In contrast, if you break in at night you’re battling the machines, the alarms, sensors and cameras. For many this is playing the game on hard mode as the security devices are more unforgiving than people, and if you miss a single one you could blow the engagement. But there are instances where this is actually the easiest way to play the game

For example, you have a facility with a front and rear entrance with cameras pointed at each but no other sensors in the interior of the building. If you can find a way to bypass the doors, perhaps a window or fire escape, and stay away from them than you don’t have to worry about any security at all.

But there is one threat that is every present in both situations … the possibility of getting caught. Maybe its an employee, an after hours janitor you weren’t aware of, a security guard, perhaps you trigger an alarm, could be anyone or anything … and with that comes the skills that every black team member must master before going on the job.