SCADA Checks

The Tenable Nessus ProfessionalFeed contains, in addition to the regular network vulnerability checks, several dozen plugins for Nessus 4 that specifically discover and test SCADA devices.

The SCADA family of plugins will readily produce vulnerability audit data that can be leveraged for a variety of NERC and other types of security audits involving process control networks. In the power industry, this can help create various lists of devices by active SCADA protocol (ICCP, DNP3, etc.) as well as function or even "Area of Responsibility".

For NERC compliance, this process can help make sure the list of "Critical Cyber-Security Assets" is accurate and does not include too many hosts while ignoring others.

In addition, through funding by the Department of Energy, Digital Bond has produced a wide variety of audit policies for Nessus users to test the configurations of many different types of Unix and Windows control system software.

Both Tenable and Digital Bond have written extensively about SCADA and Control Systems auditing in their blogs:

• Bandolier and NERC CIP 
• Extending Bandolier with Other Nessus Credential Checks 
• Bandolier Security Audit File Release: MatrikonOPC 
• Nessus SCADA Plugins

If you are an enterprise customer, you should consider applying Tenable's Unified Security Monitoring approach to NERC and control systems monitoring. We've produced a short video entitled  Auditing Scada and Control System Networks that shows how our passive, active and log analysis products can be used to monitor control system networks.