Walmart Takes a 'Trusted Agent' Approach to Purple Teaming
TechTarget, Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
Walmart colocates red and blue teams and embeds blue observers in red campaigns to kill win-lose dynamics.
Walmart global VP of security operations Jason O'Dell has restructured purple teaming around trust rather than competition, moving red and blue teams into the same business unit and physical location.
During adversary emulation, two blue team members sit with the red team as trusted agents, checking in real time whether telemetry, logs, and detections fire and ensuring the exercise does not harm the business.
O'Dell's point is that a red team that only attacks and files a report delivers limited value, while one that tells defenders what would have made the attack harder forces both sides to adapt.
The result is incremental improvement rather than a win-lose scoreboard, which also helps retention. The model depends on observers who will not tip off their own colleagues.