OT Network Security, ICS Architecture Review, and Safe Active Validation
Power generation, water treatment, maritime terminals, and manufacturing plants cannot tolerate security testing designed for office networks. Global Digital Forensics works alongside your control engineers to map operational technology assets, validate IT to OT network segmentation, and test SCADA environments under strict operator defined safety and uptime rules.
Operator controlled assessment model
Legacy PLCs, RTUs, and industrial protocols were engineered for deterministic reliability rather than adversarial resilience. Running standard enterprise vulnerability scanners across a control network can trip relays, stall production lines, or blind operator consoles. We begin every industrial engagement with passive traffic analysis, architecture review, and engineering walkthroughs before proposing any active validation inside scheduled maintenance windows.
We inspect network telemetry, switch configurations, and industrial protocol traffic including Modbus, DNP3, EtherNet/IP, and OPC UA to build an accurate inventory of controllers, HMIs, and data flows with zero impact on live processes.
Most industrial intrusions start in the corporate IT network and cross into the control environment through shared authentication, misconfigured firewalls, or historian links. We verify that your zones and conduits actually block unauthorized lateral movement.
Third party equipment vendors, integrators, and remote maintenance tunnels frequently bypass perimeter controls. We audit jump servers, multifactor enforcement, session logging, and vendor access paths down to the cabinet level.
Industrial sectors and environments
Substation automation, generation controls, and distribution management systems evaluated against NERC CIP technical requirements and real world threat actor tactics.
Protection for distributed telemetry, cellular RTU links, chemical dosing controls, and supervisory networks across municipal and regional utility authorities.
Security assessments for Automated Mooring Systems, Ship to Shore crane networks, terminal operating systems, and vessel engineering and navigation networks aligned with USCG and IMO requirements.
Segmentation verification, engineering workstation hardening, and ransomware containment planning for high volume production facilities and automated logistics hubs.
The four stage OT assessment workflow
We meet with your plant engineers and OT security leads to review network diagrams, identify safety instrumented systems, and establish absolute stop conditions and operational boundaries.
Our team analyzes packet captures, firewall rule sets, HMI configurations, and Active Directory trusts to map every communication path between corporate IT, the industrial DMZ, and level 0 through level 3 control zones.
Where active testing is needed, our specialists validate specific access paths on lab replicas, staging equipment, or production systems during scheduled outages under the direct supervision of your facility operators.
We deliver a clear technical report and architecture roadmap tailored to industrial realities. When legacy controllers cannot be patched, we design compensating network controls, protocol filtering, and monitoring rules that isolate the exposure without requiring capital equipment replacement.
Sample finding format
Every finding in the roadmap carries the same parts, so plant engineering, security and leadership work from the same facts. This example uses a common pattern we look for: a vendor support account that reaches further than the equipment it was created to maintain.
Management summary
A support account can reach control zone assets beyond the equipment it maintains. If the vendor's credentials are stolen, the attacker inherits that reach into systems that run the process.
Engineering record
Evidence: access approvals, identity groups, jump host policy and firewall rules. Next step: narrow the approved path, keep session records and agree the verification test with operations.
Owner, reference and verification
A corrective owner named by the operator, a NIST SP 800-82 reference and, where it applies, a NERC CIP requirement or an AWIA planning input, plus the configuration check that closes the finding at retest.
We agree the report audience, depth and retest scope in writing during scoping, so the document you receive is the one you planned for.
Why a forensic practice
An industrial security finding can end up in a rate case, an insurance claim or a courtroom. Global Digital Forensics has practiced since 1992 and its examiners have testified in federal and state courts, so every finding in your report records its source, its date and the method behind it, ready for the question a regulator, an underwriter or opposing counsel will eventually ask: how do you know?
On the first call we name the technical lead who will run your assessment. Practitioner credentials are on our team biographies page.
Regulatory alignment and incident readiness
Whether your facility is preparing for a NERC CIP audit, meeting Coast Guard maritime cyber mandates under 33 CFR Part 101 Subpart F, aligning with NIST SP 800-82 Revision 3 and ISA/IEC 62443, or satisfying cyber insurance underwriting requirements, our reports map every technical finding directly to the governing standard. If an operational incident or ransomware event is already affecting your environment, our 24/7 response team isolates the breach while preserving volatile PLC, historian, and network evidence.
The same discipline applies when an assessment uncovers trouble already in progress. An unexplained remote session or a controller program that differs from its approved backup ends the affected work on the spot; we call your escalation contact, preserve what we found and hand it to our OT, ICS and SCADA incident response and OT, ICS and SCADA forensics teams with the evidence trail intact.
Our New York office coordinates facilities across New York and New Jersey and neighboring operations in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Major New York electric, gas, steam and water utilities fall under the cybersecurity regulations the New York Public Service Commission adopted in April 2026, New Jersey utilities answer to the NJ Board of Public Utilities Division of Reliability and Security, and covered entities under NYDFS 23 NYCRR Part 500 can pair the assessment with our NYDFS Part 500 technical evidence support. The two planning packs below are written for operators in those two states.
AWIA planning pack for New York and New Jersey operators
Applicability prompts, an evidence owner checklist, a worked access finding and fillable planning worksheets for drinking water and wastewater systems.
NERC CIP scoping pack for New York and New Jersey operators
A remote access evidence checklist, authorization boundaries, a worked finding and fillable scope and action records for power and energy operators.
Executive planning asset
Prepare your engineering and security teams for an efficient scoping discussion. The kit pairs our OT Security Readiness checklist with a CSV workbook that organizes asset and zone inventories, conduits and enterprise connections, remote vendor dependencies, and the stop conditions and safety boundaries a power, water, maritime or manufacturing facility signs off before anyone tests.
Eight readiness items, from the asset and function inventory to the stop and resumption authority, each with an owner, a status and a secure reference field.
Format: ZIP containing a printable HTML checklist and a CSV workbook.
Running a larger program? The OT assessment planning library holds the four sector packs and the project workbook, and the OT cybersecurity audit workbook builder assembles a workbook set for your states and operating scope.
Frequently asked
Yes. Documentation review, interviews and passive observation establish the baseline while the process runs, and your engineers approve the timing and method of every active check before it happens.
Yes. We examine vendor accounts, authentication, permissions, connection paths, approval procedures and session records, and the report names the control changes that would close each gap.
Yes. We assess older controllers in their operating context, including segmentation, access control, monitoring, backups and recovery, and recommend compensating controls where replacement is years away.
Yes. We separate the controls common to every site from the dependencies specific to each one, coordinate with each operating team and organize the findings for local remediation and fleet level decisions.
The assessment covers the whole control environment, architecture, access and recovery. SCADA security testing goes deeper on the supervisory layer, and ICS penetration testing follows authorized attack paths toward the controllers. Many operators start with the assessment.
It ranks findings by consequence to the process, shows the evidence behind each one and sets out the remediation and verification steps in the order we recommend, sorted by the maintenance window each fix needs.
Tell us about your facility, the control systems in scope, and your compliance or operational timeline. A senior industrial security lead will review your architecture requirements and, on the first call, walk you through the recommended scope, timeline and pricing. That first consultation is free.
Technical review: Joseph Caruso, Founder, CEO and CTO. Reviewed .
Reviewed by Joseph Caruso, Founder, CEO and CTO, CISSP. Last reviewed .
Assessment scope
Share your organization and preferred reply method. We review the request, discuss the technical lead and reporting needs, then agree the scope before work starts.
No network diagrams, credentials or detailed vulnerabilities are needed here. Secure exchange is arranged separately.
Active OT incident? Call (800) 868-8189 for 24/7 intake.