Expert ICS Penetration Testing Services for Plant Safety
Learn how Red Trident conducts safe ICS penetration testing without disrupting operations. Expert guidance for plant managers and OT engineers.
When it comes to improving OT (operational technology) cybersecurity, a vulnerability assessment provides insightful information so businesses can have a better understanding of their infrastructure and security risks. A vulnerability assessment analyzes the environment to discover potential issues that might compromise security, overall business operations, compliance and/or network privacy. The purpose is to use this insight to address these issues before a malicious actor gains unauthorized access.
BENEFITS OF VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENTS
Vulnerability Assessments identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and gaps against OT security best practices. Each finding gets assigned a severity level along with direction on how to remediate or mitigate the issues so they can be fixed before it becomes an issue.
- Identifies vulnerabilities and misconfiguration of ICS hardware, software, and networks
- Identifies risks associated with existing processes, standards, and personnel
- Identifies current capabilities to protect, detect, respond, and recover from attacks, security anomalies, or incidents
VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY
At Red Trident, our vulnerability assessment approach is comprehensive and precise, segmented into four key modules: domain enumeration, workstation enumeration, network enumeration, and configuration analysis.
Domain Enumeration
Most environments rely on Active Directory to manage users and resources, but misconfigurations can create real security risks. Our domain enumeration module scans for exposures within directory services—like over-privileged user accounts, vulnerable service accounts, and insecure delegation settings—without disrupting your systems. We identify issues such as excessive permissions, susceptible user objects (including those at risk of kerberoasting or AS-REP roasting), and improper delegation, providing actionable insight to strengthen your network’s security.
Workstation Enumeration
Industrial environments often depend on numerous Windows-based systems. Our workstation enumeration digs deep into each endpoint, assessing OS builds, installed applications, and security controls. We look for mismanaged local admin accounts, outdated software, and services that could allow attackers to escalate privileges or move laterally. By uncovering these risks, we help you reinforce the security of every workstation in your network.
Network Enumeration
Operational Technology (OT) networks require extra care during assessment. Red Trident’s team starts with passive enumeration, network sniffing, protocol decoding and DNS analysis, to learn what the traffic shows without touching a device. We then move to active scanning, because it provides a large amount of data a passive capture never can: open services, firmware and software versions, configuration weaknesses and reachable paths. Our engineers have performed active scans on live production control networks for years and understand the potential impacts on each class of device, which is what makes it safe. We map your network topology and identify assets, searching for weak points such as default credentials, devices exposed to the internet, and insecure protocols in use. All assessments are fully coordinated with your team and conducted with proper authorization to ensure safe, reliable operations.
Configuration Analysis
Proper configuration is key to defense in depth. Our configuration analysis reviews critical settings and parameters across firewalls, switches, and other network devices. We compare your current configurations against best practices and industry standards, highlighting issues like overly permissive firewall rules or exposed services. This analysis helps you close gaps that could be exploited by attackers or cause operational issues.
Find Vulnerabilities Others Overlook
There are many cybersecurity companies that offer vulnerability assessments, but very few focus on ICS environments and OT security. The Red Trident Team has decades of experience across multiple ICS environments and verticals. We understand that production environments are sensitive and often very complex. We recognize that even potential small interruptions to the operation can have a profound impact on the outputs. Our Vulnerability Assessments use custom tools build specifically for OT Cybersecurity.
Red Trident’s Vulnerability Assessment Scoping Process
We understand that common mitigation controls, such as patching, might not be possible due to the sensitivities of solutions and technology commonly found within ICS environments. For reasons like this, our vulnerability assessment process includes collaboration and working with your team to make sure we’re addressing your concerns and unique business environments.
What’s Included in the Vulnerability Assessment
Once the assessment is concluded, customers can expect to receive a report consisting of the following components:
Why Red Trident
At Red Trident, we do more than provide cybersecurity assessments—we build partnerships. Your business goals and risk profile drive everything we do. From the moment we engage, our focus is on understanding your unique operating environment, listening to your concerns, and aligning our recommendations with your organizational priorities.
Our team is comprised of recognized leaders in industrial cybersecurity, with decades of experience across critical infrastructure, manufacturing, government, and defense sectors. You may have seen us on stage at global security conferences like DEF CON, Black Hat, or SANS ICS Summits. But what truly sets us apart is our commitment to clear, actionable communication—translating complex risk into practical insights your executive team can act upon.
When you choose Red Trident, you get a proactive partner committed to your long-term security posture, not just a report. Let’s move your security program forward—together.
Assessing OT Vulnerabilities Without Disrupting Operations
The first question every plant manager asks is whether the assessment itself can take a process down. It can, if it is run like an IT scan. Generic port scanners and credentialed sweeps have crashed PLCs and HMIs that were never designed to answer unexpected traffic. Our OT vulnerability assessment separates the work into two layers: passive collection first, then hands-on validation.
Passive collection means listening on span ports and reviewing configurations, firmware versions, firewall rules and remote-access paths without sending a single packet to a controller. Validation is active only where it is safe and agreed: specific devices, protocol-aware checks, during a planned window, with the control engineer present. Nothing automated touches a safety instrumented system. Every finding is confirmed by an engineer before it reaches the report, so you are prioritising real exposure, not scanner noise.
Legacy and Unpatchable Assets: Compensating Controls, Not Just a List
Most OT environments run equipment that cannot be patched: end-of-life controllers, vendor-locked Windows hosts, systems validated for a regulated process. Listing their CVEs changes nothing. For every unpatchable asset we identify the compensating control that actually reduces risk: segmentation that removes the attack path, firewall rules that act as a virtual patch, hardened remote access, tighter monitoring on the segment it lives in. The report states which controls exist today, which are missing, and the order to add them.
OT Vulnerability Management: From One Assessment to a Repeatable Program
A single assessment is a snapshot. OT vulnerability management is the practice of keeping that picture current as assets, firmware and network paths change. We build the program around what operations can sustain: an asset inventory that stays accurate, a prioritisation rule that puts exploitability and process impact ahead of raw CVSS scores, a cadence for re-validation, and a way to measure risk reduction after remediation with a before-and-after view rather than a count of closed tickets.
Findings Mapped to MITRE ATT&CK for ICS
Each finding is mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK for ICS tactics and techniques it enables, so engineering and security teams share one language for the attacker’s likely path, from initial access through impact on the process. That mapping is what lets you defend a remediation budget to leadership and to auditors: it ties a specific weakness to a specific consequence on the plant floor.
How OT Vulnerability Assessments Are Scoped and Priced
Engagements are sized by the environment, not by a seat count. The drivers are the number of sites and network zones, the count and variety of control assets, whether passive collection infrastructure already exists, how much active validation is appropriate, and the depth of the remediation roadmap you want delivered. A single-site assessment with a focused scope and a multi-site program with ongoing re-validation are different engagements, and we scope them differently. Ask for a scoping call and we will tell you what the assessment would cover and what it would cost before anyone is on site.
How AART Supports Our OT Vulnerability Assessments
AART, Red Trident’s Automated Assessment and Response Toolkit, is the proprietary technology our engineers use to deliver OT vulnerability assessments. It automates host-level data collection, asset characterization, configuration analysis and security-control validation, so the engineer on site spends time on judgement rather than on gathering and transcribing technical detail.
In practice that means assessments move faster, manual data collection drops, and findings are consistent from one site and one engagement to the next. The same baseline AART establishes on the first assessment is what we validate against on the follow-up, which is how a one-time assessment becomes a repeatable security baseline. AART is an enabling capability inside the service, not a standalone product, and it complements the on-site engineering work rather than replacing it: our OT cybersecurity engineers still decide what is collected, where and when, and every finding and recommendation is theirs.
OT Vulnerability Assessment FAQ
Do you perform OT vulnerability assessments on site or remotely?
We prefer on-site assessments, and for live production environments we strongly recommend them. Being on the plant floor lets our engineers see the physical network, the panels and the remote-access paths that never appear in a diagram, work alongside your control engineers, and make safety calls in real time. Remote work is reserved for document review, follow-up validation and environments where on-site access is not practical.
How do you assess vulnerabilities in an OT environment without disrupting operations?
On site, by preference. Passive observation and configuration review come first, so we understand the network before we send a packet. Then we scan actively, with protocol-aware tools and settings chosen for the devices present, during planned windows and with the control engineer present. Active scanning is what yields versions, services and configuration detail that passive collection cannot; doing it safely comes from years of hands-on control-system experience, not from a tool. Findings are validated by an engineer, not by a script.
Can you scan PLCs, HMIs and SCADA systems safely?
Yes. The risk in scanning controllers is not the scan itself but the team running it: generic IT scans with default settings can crash legacy devices. Our engineers have scanned PLCs, HMIs and SCADA systems on production networks for years, know which devices and protocols need which settings, and plan each scan with your engineers in an agreed window. Before engaging any team for active work, vet their control-system experience and their understanding of the potential impacts, not whether they have completed a scanning course.
How do you assess legacy OT systems that cannot be patched?
We identify the compensating controls that remove or shrink the attack path, such as segmentation, virtual patching at the firewall and strict access restrictions, and we prioritise those assets for monitoring and isolation.
How do you prioritise vulnerabilities with known exploits?
By exploitability in your network context rather than CVSS alone: internet exposure, proximity to critical control assets and the compensating controls already in place decide what is an immediate risk to safety and availability.
What is AART and how is it used during an assessment?
AART (Automated Assessment and Response Toolkit) is Red Trident’s proprietary assessment technology. During an OT vulnerability assessment it automates host-level data collection, asset characterization, configuration analysis and security-control validation, which accelerates the assessment, reduces manual effort and keeps findings consistent across sites and over time. Its collection activities are scoped with your control engineers for each environment; nothing is treated as risk-free by default in a running plant.
Do you offer remediation services?
Yes, we offer many options. We can take care of remediation for you or work together with your team to handle components that are outside their expertise. We also offer training options if that’s something that you’re interested in.
How often do you recommend getting a vulnerability assessment?
The minimum recommended interval is once per year or after significant changes to infrastructure or business operations have been made. However, depending on the business criticality of the systems being tested, some businesses opt for quarterly or monthly testing. Organizations with high-security requirements may also be required to complete a vulnerability assessment at specific intervals for compliance or when a merger or acquisition (M&A) is being considered.
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