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Practitioner 2 days

Cybersecurity for Safety Instrumented Systems

Treating the safety system as a target rather than as an island

IEC 61511 requires a security risk assessment of the safety instrumented system, and Triton demonstrated why. This course covers zone and conduit design, the security lifecycle in IEC 62443, and how security requirements interact with functional safety requirements rather than overriding them.

This course sits alongside our Functional Safety Engineering consulting work, so what is taught is what we do.

Who should attend

Control, instrumentation and functional safety engineers
OT security specialists working with safety systems
Plant IT staff with operational technology responsibility
Engineers conducting the IEC 61511 security risk assessment

Course content

Every module is taught with worked examples and exercises drawn from real plant, and adapted to your own process where the course runs in house.

1

The threat as it applies to safety systems

  • The Triton and Trisis attack and what it targeted
  • Why a safety system is a high value target rather than an obscure one
  • Attack paths through engineering workstations and remote access
2

The IEC 62443 framework

  • Zones, conduits and the reference architecture
  • Security levels and how they are targeted and achieved
  • Foundational requirements and how they map to control system capability
3

Security risk assessment under IEC 61511

  • What the standard actually requires and at what lifecycle stage
  • Conducting the assessment and documenting it
  • Interaction between security countermeasures and safety availability
4

Practical controls

  • Segregation of safety and control networks
  • Key switch position, write protection and configuration control
  • Patch management where availability constraints are real
  • Detection and response for OT environments

What you receive

  • A zone and conduit diagram template
  • A security risk assessment worksheet aligned to IEC 61511
  • A safety system hardening checklist
  • Assessment result and attendance record

What changes afterwards

  • The IEC 61511 security assessment requirement is met with evidence
  • Safety and security teams work from one shared model of the system
  • Countermeasures are chosen without quietly reducing safety availability
  • Engineering workstation and remote access exposure is understood and controlled

Standards and references

We teach Cybersecurity for Safety Instrumented Systems against IEC 62443 series for industrial automation and control system security and the codes listed with it, at the edition current when you run it.

IEC 62443 series for industrial automation and control system securityIEC 61511 clause 8 security risk assessment requirementNIST SP 800 82 guide to operational technology security

Run Cybersecurity for Safety Instrumented Systems for your team

We will come back with dates, the pre-reading it needs and a cost per head. Tell us who is attending, what they already do day to day and whether you want it at your site or delivered online.

Ask about dates and cost