For years, automated security configuration assessments (SCAs) have been a standard part of cybersecurity programs. IT security teams routinely evaluate operating systems, applications, servers and network devices against established security benchmarks, helping them identify misconfigurations, demonstrate compliance and support remediation efforts at scale. OT environments, however, have largely been left behind.
The need for secure configurations is no less important in OT than in traditional IT. In fact, the opposite is often true. OT systems control and monitor physical processes, including essential services. Increasingly, industrial control systems, manufacturing systems, building automation systems and other cyber-physical assets are connected to enterprise networks and critical business processes. Yet many organizations still lack practical ways to assess whether those systems are configured according to established security requirements.
As ever more OT and IoT systems get folded into enterprise cybersecurity governance, organizations are discovering that the security assessment approaches that work well in IT environments often break down when applied to operational systems. The result is a growing gap between compliance requirements and the ability to validate them.
Why Automated SCAs Have Been Difficult in OT
In traditional IT environments, automated SCAs are supported by mature tooling, endpoint agents, active scanning technologies and well-established configuration management practices. OT environments present a very different set of challenges.
- Many operational assets cannot support endpoint agents. Active scans may disrupt critical processes or create unacceptable operational risk.
- Some systems operate continuously and can’t be taken offline for assessment.
- They may also be distributed across facilities, plants, warehouses, energy infrastructure or other remote locations with limited direct access.
- Organizations are often left relying on spreadsheets, manual validation and fragmented reporting processes that are hard to maintain and nearly impossible to scale.
At the same time, cybersecurity expectations for OT continue to rise. Risk management frameworks, regulatory requirements and sector-specific guidance increasingly expect organizations not only to demonstrate that security controls exist, but also to provide evidence that those controls remain effective over time. Configuration management is becoming a larger part of that discussion.
DISA STIGs: Growing Pressure to Demonstrate Control-system Configuration Compliance
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) presents a prime use case. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) publishes Security Technical Implementation Guides, commonly known as STIGs. These guides translate cybersecurity requirements into detailed configuration benchmarks for operating systems, applications, network devices and other technologies. They support implementation of requirements within the DoD Risk Management Framework (RMF) and related cybersecurity programs.
Historically, STIG compliance has been strongly associated with traditional IT systems. However, the underlying cybersecurity governance frameworks increasingly extend beyond enterprise IT. In 2021, the DoD Control Systems Security Requirements Guide (SRG) established cybersecurity requirements for industrial control systems, SCADA environments, facility-related control systems and other cyber-physical systems. Today, defense industrial base (DIB) organizations face growing pressure to demonstrate configuration compliance and provide auditable evidence during RMF and authorization activities.
The challenge is that, like broader security assessments, most STIG assessment processes were designed for conventional IT environments.
Existing Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) and STIG assessment workflows work well for laptops, servers and enterprise infrastructure. They’re less effective for operational environments containing industrial controllers, engineering workstations, facility systems, operational servers and other assets that may not tolerate traditional assessment techniques.
For many defense organizations, this has created a significant blind spot. The requirement to assess and validate security configurations exists, but the tools needed to do so safely and efficiently across OT environments have been limited.
Why Defense Organizations Need Automated OT SCAs Now
Many defense contractors are no longer asking whether configuration assessments should be performed in OT environments; they’re asking how to perform them safely and at scale. Several factors are driving this shift:
- Cybersecurity evidence requirements continue to increase. Security teams are expected to provide repeatable, auditable proof of configuration compliance rather than relying solely on documented policies.
- OT plays an increasingly important role in mission readiness, manufacturing, logistics, facilities management, sustainment and critical infrastructure operations across the DIB.
- Defense organizations recognize that manual compliance processes can’t keep pace with the growing number of operational assets deployed across distributed environments.
Introducing Automated OT Security Configuration Assessments
Nozomi Networks has developed automated OT SCA capabilities, initially mapped to DISA STIGs. Using Nozomi Arc sensors, organizations can safely collect the host-level configuration data needed to evaluate Windows-, Linux- and macOS-based OT endpoints against DISA STIG benchmarks, without relying on traditional IT-centric assessment approaches. Assessment results can then be consolidated, tracked and managed centrally on-prem using our Central Management Console (CMC) and in the cloud using Vantage or Vantage for Government, our FedRAMP® Class C (Moderate) Saas platform.
This enables security teams to:
- Automate configuration assessments across distributed OT environments
- Centralize compliance visibility across assets, policies and benchmarks
- Track assessment posture and changes over time
- Review pass/fail findings and associated evidence
- Investigate individual rule-level findings and apply clear remediation guidance
- Integrate configuration assessment activities into broader security and compliance workflows
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Unlike traditional compliance approaches that depend on multiple tools, spreadsheets and disconnected reports, the platform provides a centralized view of configuration posture across operational environments. Organizations can quickly understand which OT assets are compliant, which benchmarks are failing, where risk exists and what actions to prioritize. It also makes individual configuration assessment results available alongside asset inventory, vulnerability, risk and other security information, helping teams move beyond compliance reporting and toward risk-informed decision-making.
DISA STIGs Are Only the Beginning
Organizations increasingly need efficient ways to evaluate endpoint configurations, collect evidence and demonstrate compliance across diverse OT and IoT environments. DISA STIG compliance is the first automated SCA that we’re providing, but there are many more to come. Our roadmap is to create a scalable OT-native assessment platform capable of supporting multiple security frameworks — one that ultimately enables organizations to map and evaluate their own security requirements against operational assets.
In other words, we believe OT and IoT environments need the same level of automated configuration assurance that IT teams have relied on for years.
If there’s a security configuration framework, benchmark or regulatory requirement you would like to see supported next, please contact us today.
