Every organisation that puts AI to work in cyber defence must first answer a practical question: who decides what the AI may do, who decides each action, who answers for it when it is wrong, and who can stop it. In security the question is sharper than elsewhere, because security AI reads content written by adversaries, holds the most sensitive telemetry in the organisation and, in its more capable forms, can isolate a host or revoke a session. If the answers are vague, the organisation has delegated authority without knowing to whom.
This chapter supplies the vocabulary the rest of the book uses: the team colours, the six usage modes read through a security lens and the five autonomy levels, from Level 0 Advisory to Level 4 Autonomous, followed by how mode and level are decided, how accountability and human command are made real, and how scarce skills are sourced. In CSF 2.0 terms the chapter is responsible for GV.RR Roles, Responsibilities, and Authorities, whose outcomes are that leadership is accountable for cybersecurity risk, that roles and authorities are established, communicated and enforced, that resources match the risk strategy, and that cybersecurity is part of human-resources practice (19, NIST, 2024). It treats the Category through the three focus areas of the NIST Cyber AI Profile (20, NIST, 2025).
The colours of security teams describe functions, not departments. The red team emulates the adversary, executing authorised attacks against the organisation's own or contracted systems under written rules of engagement. The blue team defends: it monitors, detects, investigates, contains and recovers. The purple team is less a third group than the joint loop between the two: red findings become detections, guardrails, configurations and process changes, and the scenario that found the gap is re-run to show it is closed. The white team controls the exercise: it approves scope and rules of engagement, can pause or end an exercise, deconflicts red activity from real incidents so that a test is not escalated to the national CSIRT, and keeps the record.
Primary topics explored
- Red, blue, purple and white
- The usage modes through a security lens
- Autonomy levels for security AI
- Deciding mode and level together
- Machine identities and accountability
- Human command by design
About AI Red Team
AI Red Team is Book 4 of The Transformed Architecture. It shows how large European enterprises and public authorities put artificial intelligence to work as an active part of cyber defence: AI-assisted red teaming and adversary emulation, red teaming of AI systems themselves, the AI-assisted security operations centre, detection engineering, threat intelligence, incident response and purple teaming, all under a lawful mandate and with evidence a supervisor can inspect.
It builds on the conclusions of Architecture as Code, AI Governance and AI Platform and Security.
CISOs, SOC leads, red and blue team practitioners, security architects, AI architects and technical decision-makers.
Gunnar Nordqvist
Conceived, directed and published the books of The Transformed Architecture.
Continue with the full chapter
Chapter 6: Roles, Usage Modes and Autonomy Levels: People in Command of Security AI in AI Red Team gives the detailed explanations, practical examples and implementation patterns behind this summary.
This whitepaper belongs to “Govern” and is one of 32 drawn from the manuscript.