Providing practical cyber defense guidance for the protection and resilience of critical infrastructure control systems that power and support our daily lives.
Trusted ICS/OT Cybersecurity Leadership supporting organizations across Electric Power, Water/Wastewater, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Pharmaceutical, Transportation, and other Critical Infrastructure sectors.
The ICS Defense Force Advantage
ICS Defense Force delivers engineering-aligned ICS/OT cybersecurity guidance backed by SANS ICS/OT leadership and real industrial field experience, helping critical infrastructure organizations strengthen safety, operational resilience, defensible architecture, and incident readiness.
Engineering Aligned ICS/OT Incident Response Tabletop Exercises
1 in 5 industrial organizations experience cybersecurity incidents that disrupt operations, engineering, or safety — and 20% take more than a month to recover.
Download the Industrial Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise Planning Cheat Sheet and contact us today to facilitate a realistic, engineering-aligned ICS/OT tabletop exercise for your organization.​
THE ICS DEFENSE FORCE OVERWATCH PROGRAM
Expert-led rapid OT network snapshots assessments, OT threat intel insights and check-ins every month that strengthen OT/ICS network visibility, and industrial incident response readiness. That’s the ICS Defense Force Overwatch Program — delivering rapid insights, rapid action, and smarter ICS/OT cybersecurity
— every month.​ Download the ICSDF OT Overwatch Advisory Overview and contact us today to strengthen your operational resilience and ICS/OT cybersecurity maturity.​​
The SANS Five ICS Cybersecurity Critical Controls are the foundation of industrial cybersecurity, yet many organizations still struggle to identify operational risks and maturity gaps. ICS Defense Force addresses this through a 90-minute fixed-cost ICS/OT cybersecurity rapid assessment guided by our industrial field experts and supported by our AI-driven assessment toolkit.
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Download the ICSDF Five ICS Cybersecurity Critical Controls Assessment Overview and contact us today to evaluate and strengthen critical ICS/OT cybersecurity defenses.​​​​
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20 Years Experience
Led by trusted ICS/OT cybersecurity leader and Principal SANS Instructor Dean Parsons, ICS Defense Force supports global critical infrastructure with practical, defensible, and threat-informed guidance. Backed by over 20 years of industrial cybersecurity and engineering field experience, ICSDF aligns cybersecurity improvements with operational reliability, safety, and real-world industrial requirements.
CONTACT
Schedule Your Call With an ICS/OT Expert Now
Strengthen and prioritize your ICS/OT cybersecurity defenses.
Dean Parsons, B.Sc., CISSP, GICSP, GRID, GSLC, GCIA
Principal SANS Instructor, ICS 418 Co-Author & Instructor, ICS 515 Course Instructor, Critical Infrastructure & ICS (Industrial Control System) and Security Defender, Cybersecurity Leader & Practitioner - End to end cyber security defence.
Dean is the CEO and Principal Consultant of ICS Defense Force and brings over 20 years of technical and management experience to the classroom. He has worked in both Information Technology and Industrial Control System (ICS) Cyber Defense in critical infrastructure sectors such as telecommunications, electric generation, transmission, distribution, and oil & gas refineries, storage, and distribution, and water management.
Dean is an ambassador for defending industrial systems and an advocate for the safety, reliability, and cyber protection of critical infrastructure. His mission as an instructor is to empower each of his students, and he earnestly preaches that “Defense is Do-able!” Over the course of his career, Dean’s accomplishments include establishing entire ICS security programs for critical infrastructure sectors, successfully conducting industrial-grade incident response and tabletops, ICS digital forensics, and ICS/OT Cybersecurity assessments across multiple sectors.
As a SANS Principal Instructor, Dean teaches ICS515: ICS Visibility, Detection, and Response, is a co-author of the SANS course ICS418: ICS Security Essentials for Leaders and an author of SANS ICS Engineer Technical Awareness Training. Dean is a member of the SANS GIAC Advisory Board and holds many cybersecurity professional certifications including the GICSP, GRID, GSLC, and GCIA, as well as the CISSP®, and holds a BS in computer science.
