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Aligning with:

The SANS 5 ICS Critical Controls

Prioritizing cybersecurity controls simplifies compliance and defense, supporting organizations to drive continuous operational resilience across their critical operations and infrastructure.

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SANS 5 ICS Critical Controls FAQs

What are the SANS 5 ICS Critical Controls?

The SANS Institute established the Five ICS Cybersecurity Critical Controls to provide defenders with an intelligence-driven baseline of essential security practices designed specifically to protect operational technology (OT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS). These controls prioritize the highest-impact defensive safeguards derived directly from real-world adversary behavior targeting industrial infrastructure.

What are the SANS 5 Critical Control Requirements?

The requirements define an intelligence-driven baseline across five high-leverage defensive pillars designed to protect physical safety and operational uptime. They dictate preparing consequence-focused incident response plans, establishing defensible zone architectures, deploying non-intrusive network monitoring for real-time visibility, enforcing zero-trust remote access, and prioritizing weaponized vulnerabilities using localized compensating controls.

Who Do the SANS 5 Critical Controls Impact?

The SANS 5 Critical Controls are aimed at asset owners, site engineering managers, Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), Security Operations Center (SOC) teams, and third-party service providers across critical infrastructure sectors (e.g., Energy, Manufacturing, Water, Public Sector). Adhering to these prioritized controls helps organizations bridge the gap between abstract security frameworks and live operational security.

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How are the SANS 5 Controls Enforced?

While the SANS 5 controls represent an intelligence-driven baseline rather than a direct regulatory body, aligning with them helps industrial operators satisfy mandatory global regulations, such as CIRCIA in the United States, the NIS2 Directive (and national laws like Germany’s NIS2UmsuCG) in the European Union, and the SOCI Act in Australia.

How the Playbook Supports Alignment with the SANS 5 Controls

The SANS 5 ICS Critical Controls provide a prioritized starting point that operationalizes comprehensive standards like IEC 62443 and NIST SP 800-82. The downloadable playbook outlines actionable strategies to align people, process, and technology across each control:

Establishes consequence-based tabletop scenarios (e.g., TRISIS or grid attacks) and builds Collection Management Frameworks (CMFs) to index forensic logs, ensuring response strategies prioritize physical process safety over abrupt system shutdowns.

Eliminates unmonitored connectivity and dual-homed pathways by designing dedicated industrial DMZs, enforcing microsegmentation, and mapping boundary pathways across functional levels.

Deploys protocol-aware, non-intrusive passive monitoring to automatically profile native industrial commands, track logic changes, and establish dynamic inventories without risking device downtime.

Deprecates legacy, always-on VPNs in favor of purpose-built, on-demand OT sessions with mandatory MFA, granular least-privilege permissions, and complete session video auditing.

Cross-references passive inventory data with verified threat intelligence and Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) to implement targeted compensating controls where software patching is infeasible.

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Claroty Solutions that Align with the SANS 5 Controls

Claroty xDome

Claroty xDome is a flexible SaaS platform purpose-built for all use cases & types of CPS on the entire industrial cybersecurity journey.

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Claroty xDome Secure Access

Claroty xDome Secure Access delivers frictionless, reliable, secure remote access for internal and third-party OT personnel.

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Claroty CTD

Claroty Continuous Threat Detection (CTD) offers robust, on-premises cybersecurity controls for industrial environments.

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Align with the SANS 5 Critical Controls using Claroty xDome

See how Claroty moves you beyond basic perimeter defence to systematically satisfy critical OT controls and protect your networks.

Executive Whitepaper Download

Want to see how your organization can systematically operationalize the SANS 5 Critical Controls across your cyber-physical systems?

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