ICS418: ICS Security Essentials for Leaders™

Students with backgrounds in IT, ICS, and/or management will do well with this course.

Students should also have:

• A strong desire to lead people and manage processes to improve ICS security
• Willingness to apply lab exercises and content to their unique industrial organization
• The ability to stretch outside of their comfort zone

Important! Bring your own system configured according to these instructions.

A properly configured system is required to fully participate in this course. If you do not carefully read and follow these instructions, you will not be able to fully participate in hands-on exercises in your course. Therefore, please arrive with a system meeting all of the specified requirements.

Back up your system before class. Better yet, use a system without any sensitive/critical data. SANS is not responsible for your system or data.

Mandatory ICS418 System Hardware Requirements

• At least one available USB 3.0 Type-A port. A Type-C to Type-A adapter may be necessary for newer laptops. Some endpoint protection software prevents the use of USB devices, so test your system with a USB drive before class.
• Wireless networking (802.11 standard) is required. There is no wired Internet access in the classroom.

Mandatory ICS418 Host Configuration And Software Requirements

• Your host operating system must be the latest version of Windows 10, Windows 11, or macOS 10.15.x or newer.
• Fully update your host operating system prior to the class to ensure you have the right drivers and patches installed.
• Linux hosts are not supported in the classroom due to their numerous variations. If you choose to use Linux as your host, you are solely responsible for configuring it to work with the course materials and/or VMs.

Your course media is delivered via download. The media files for class can be large. Many are in the 40-50GB range, with some over 100GB. You need to allow plenty of time for the download to complete. Internet connections and speed vary greatly and are dependent on many different factors. Therefore, it is not possible to give an estimate of the length of time it will take to download your materials. Please start your course media downloads as soon as you get the link. You will need your course media immediately on the first day of class. Do not wait until the night before class to start downloading these files.

Your course materials include a "Setup Instructions" document that details important steps you must take before you travel to a live class event or start an online class. It may take 30 minutes or more to complete these instructions.

If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact customer support.

Now, more than ever, it is important to train and equip ICS security leaders with the skills and knowledge they need to protect critical infrastructure - the critical engineering systems that make, more and power our world. This course is the culmination of decades of experience in building and managing OT/ICS security teams - and it is the course we wish was available to us when we started on our ICS security journey. We've drawn across our roles in different industrial sectors and teams - as former company executives, team leads, incident responders, and managers - to create a course empowering leaders facing the greatest challenge of our time: industrial control system cybersecurity.

- Jason D. Christopher & Dean C. Parsons