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Control Systems Security Specialist | Work Role ID: 462 (NIST: CI-WRL-001)

27 Courses
8 Labs
43 Hours
Skill IQ

A **control systems security specialist** is responsible for device, equipment, and system-level cybersecurity configuration and day-to-day security operations of control systems, including security monitoring and maintenance along with stakeholder coordination to ensure the system and its interconnections are secure in support of mission operations.

This path will get you started on your journey to becoming a control systems security specialist! Begin with the fundamental concepts of network protocols and common network analysis and architecture security through hands-on labs, dive into the essential skills necessary to perform the day-to-day functions security event triage and then expand your skill set with, automation, deeper/advanced concepts and additional knowledge from adjacent roles!

This path aligns to the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Tasks (KSAs) within the **Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (CSWF)** and the **DoD Cyber Workforce Framework (DCWF)** for the work role of:

**Control Systems Security Specialist** Work Role 462 or CI-WRL-001

Get started

Content in this path

Fundamentals

Begin your learning journey with the fundamental concepts of networking and security!

Course

Network Security Basics

  • by Ross Bagurdes
  • 2h 58m
  • Oct 27, 2021
Course

Network Protocols for Security: DNS

  • by Brandon DeVault
  • 17m
  • Sep 28, 2023
Lab

Network Protocols for Security: DNS

  • by Brandon DeVault
  • 2h 5m
  • Aug 04, 2025
Course

IT Security Champion: Network Security Monitoring

  • by Christopher Rees
  • 17m
  • Mar 25, 2024
Course

Windows Endpoint Security: Logs

  • by Michael Teske
  • 28m
  • Nov 29, 2023
Lab

Windows Endpoint Security: Logs

  • by Michael Teske
  • 2h 35m
  • Aug 04, 2025
Lab

Linux Endpoint Security: Logs

  • by Aaron Rosenmund
  • 2h 20m
  • Aug 04, 2025
Course

Security Framework: NIST RMF

  • by Bobby Rogers
  • 1h 8m
  • Jun 12, 2023
Course

Enterprise Security: Executive Briefing

  • by Aaron Rosenmund
  • 39m
  • Oct 12, 2024
Course

Information and Cyber Security Literacy: Security Operations

  • by Christopher Rees
  • 56m
  • Jul 08, 2024

Skill Essentials

Now that you know the fundamentals, dive into the essential skills necessary to perform the day-to-day functions of a control systems security specialist including network and architecture security!

Course

Security Controls: CIS Controls

  • by Bobby Rogers
  • 1h 32m
  • Dec 20, 2021
Course

Ethical Hacking: Cryptography

  • by Dale Meredith
  • 1h 58m
  • Nov 22, 2022
Course

Security Engineering: Asset Evaluation and Execution Plan

  • by Chris Jackson
  • 1h 10m
  • Apr 30, 2024
Course

Wide Area Networking and VPN Operation

  • by Ross Bagurdes
  • 1h 17m
  • Feb 24, 2020
Course

IT Security Champion: Patch Management

  • by Matt Glass
  • 12m
  • Mar 05, 2024
Course

Network Monitoring and Analysis with Bash

  • by Ricardo Reimao
  • 1h 12m
  • Oct 02, 2023
Course

Security Event Triage: Monitoring Network Application Services

  • by Alan Monnox
  • 2h 32m
  • Jul 31, 2025
Course

Security Event Triage: Operationalizing Security Analysis

  • by Aaron Rosenmund
  • 54m
  • Jul 31, 2025
Lab

Network Analysis: Defending SCADA Networks

  • by Kevin Cardwell
  • 1h 5m
  • Aug 05, 2025

Expanded Skillset

It's time to expand your skill set with tools, and more advanced concepts! This section gives you a brief introduction into many, additional skills that you will find helpful as a control systems security specialist. We have full training paths on all of these skills; see the Supplemental Skill Paths section to learn more.

Course

Fundamentals of OT Protocols

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 47m
  • Oct 20, 2023
Course

Fundamentals of OT Security

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 41m
  • Sep 14, 2023
Lab

OT Protocols: Modbus

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 1h 25m
  • Jul 30, 2025
Course

Specialized Engineering: Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

  • by Michael Brown
  • 1h 9m
  • Dec 05, 2022
Lab

Network Attacks: IOT Devices

  • by Kevin Cardwell
  • 40m
  • Jul 30, 2025
Lab

Deploy OT Honeypots

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 55m
  • Aug 05, 2025
Course

Security Engineering: Secure Networks

  • by Chris Jackson
  • 1h 43m
  • Aug 13, 2024

Adjacent Skill Knowledge

Now that you've mastered all the skills for a control systems security specialist, learn about additional cyber roles and their responsibilities.

Course

Information and Cyber Security GRC: Governance

  • by Dominique West
  • 1h
  • Nov 09, 2023
Course

Information and Cyber Security GRC: Risk Management

  • 1h 36m
  • Feb 27, 2024
Course

Information and Cyber Security GRC: Compliance Assessment and Reporting

  • by Jacob Ansari
  • 1h 55m
  • May 15, 2023
Course

IT Security Champion: Cyber Threat Intel and Emerging Threats

  • by Christopher Rees
  • 16m
  • Feb 29, 2024
Course

Incident Response: Network Analysis

  • by Brandon DeVault
  • 1h 10m
  • Mar 09, 2022
Course

Secure OT Network Architecture

  • 1h 19m
  • Aug 13, 2024
Course

Specialized Attacks: OT and ICS

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 1h 12m
  • Apr 14, 2022
Course

Sandworm: C2 over HTTP Emulation

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 5m
  • Nov 12, 2024
Lab

Sandworm: C2 over HTTP Emulation Lab

  • by Matthew Lloyd Davies
  • 55m
  • Aug 05, 2025
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What You'll Learn
Prerequisites
  • None
Related topics
  • dcwf
  • SCADA
  • cswf
  • nice framework
  • cyber security
  • information security
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Learn with the best

Ross Bagurdes
Ross Bagurdes
Ross has had a diverse career. He has a Structural Engineering degree from Milwaukee School of Engineering, but gave up the career shortly after graduating from college. Beginning in 1997, Ross began officially working in IT, implementing and supporting a paperless work order system for a Natural Gas Utility in Illinois. Since then, Ross has spent his years teaching and managing data networks. Ross spent 7 years at University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, supporting and managing the large ...
Brandon DeVault
Brandon DeVault
Brandon DeVault is a Security Researcher focused on threat hunting at CrowdStrike. He is also a member of the Florida Air National Guard with a variety of offensive and defensive experience. Prior to joining CrowdStrike, Brandon worked full-time as an author with Pluralsight and at Elastic, creating and delivering security content. He also worked with Special Operations Command, where he had two deployments to Afghanistan on deployable communications teams. His experience spans incident response...
Christopher Rees
Christopher Rees
Chris is a professional information technologist, author, trainer, manager and a lifelong learner. He is married with 3 beautiful children and interested in working out, spending time with family and friends and being creative whenever possible. He has been an author for over 25 years and has created over 60 IT Certification training courses. Chris really enjoys helping people advance in their careers through training and personal development.
Michael Teske
Michael Teske
Michael Teske is a principal security author with Pluralsight helping people build their skills toolkit. Michael has 25+ years of experience in the IT Ops/Cloud/Cybersecurity industry including 17 of those years as an IT instructor at a technical college, focusing on Microsoft server infrastructure, security and automation. Michael attained his MBA with an emphasis in Computer Information System Security several years ago. Michael still keeps up with the industry as an independent consultant in ...
Aaron Rosenmund
Aaron Rosenmund
Aaron M. Rosenmund is a cyber security operations subject matter expert, with a background in federal and business defensive and offensive cyber operations and system automation. Leveraging his administration and automation experience, Aaron actively contributes to multiple open and closed source security operation platform projects and continues to create tools and content to benefit the community. As an educator & cyber security researcher at Pluralsight, he is focused on advancing cyber secur...
Bobby Rogers
Bobby Rogers
Bobby E. Rogers is an information security engineer working as a contractor for Department of Defense agencies, helping to secure, certify, and accredit their information systems. His duties include information system security engineering, risk management, and certification and accreditation efforts. He retired after 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, serving as a network security engineer and instructor, and has secured networks all over the world. Bobby has a master’s degree in information assura...
Dale Meredith
Dale Meredith
Dale Meredith has been a Certified Ethical Hacker/Instructor EC-Council for the past 15 years, and Microsoft Certified Trainer for over 20 years. Dale also has an additional 7 years of senior IT management experience and worked as a CTO for a popular ISP provider. Dale's expertise is in explaining difficult concepts and ensuring his students have an actionable knowledge of the course material. Straddling the line of fun and function, Dale's instruction is memorable and entertaining. Dale's knowl...
Chris Jackson
Chris Jackson
Chris Jackson is a cybersecurity professional with years of experience in identifying security incidents, securing applications and security training. Over the years, he has tested web applications for vulnerabilities, helped deploy SIEM platforms and more. He is passionate about teaching cybersecurity and committed to learning new technologies.
Matt Glass
Matt Glass
Matt Glass is a Service Delivery Manager in Naples, Italy, working as a government contractor. Matt has 17 years of IT experience in a variety of roles. Consistently finding joy in developing the skills of others and helping their careers, he joined Pluralsight in 2017 to pass on the lessons he learned. Matt is married and the father of four children.
Ricardo Reimao
Ricardo Reimao
Ricardo is a Cybersecurity Consultant based in Toronto (Canada). He has 14+ years of IT experience, 10 of them in the IT Security field. His main interests are: SIEM solutions (IBM QRadar), Enterprise Security Risk, Penetration Testing, Security processes/procedures and Network Security.
Alan Monnox
Alan Monnox
Alan is the Lead Architect for the cyber security company Reveille Security. He is also the author of the book Rapid J2EE Development published by Prentice Hall. Alan’s tenure in the IT industry goes back over several decades and during that time he has been fortunate to work on many large-scale systems for a range of business-sectors and industries, including energy, finance, retail and healthcare. His core skills are in information security, solution architecture, and systems integration. Much...
Kevin Cardwell
Kevin Cardwell
Kevin Cardwell provides consulting services for companies throughout the world and is an adviser to numerous government entities across the globe. He is an instructor, technical editor, and author for computer forensics and hacking courses. He is author of Building Virtual Pentesting Labs for Advanced Penetration Testing, first and second edition.
Matthew Lloyd Davies
Matthew Lloyd Davies
Matt is a cyber security author and researcher here at Pluralsight. A certified penetration tester and incident handler, he created Pluralsight's CompTIA Pentest+ Specialized Attacks courses as well our courses on wireless, ICS/OT and hardware hacking. Matt has also helped to build our security labs portfolio; labs that help you get hands-on to understand the threats and vulnerabilities your organization faces today. With a background in Chemical Engineering, Matt's focus is on the security ...
Michael Brown
Michael Brown
I have worked in IT for 25 years, for 22 of those years I have delivered IT Training. I have delivered Microsoft, CISCO and Amazon Web Services courses across Europe. For the last 4 years I have focused on Cloud technologies delivering cloud training to some of Europe’s biggest organisations. I have been a Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1997 and currently hold certifications from Microsoft, CompTIA and AWS. When not working on training material or delivering courses I spend time in the nort...
Dominique West
Dominique West
With 10 years in the Technology industry, Dominique West currently manages Datadog's compliance management function within the Information Security Department. As a leader, she is responsible for maintaining and executing the regulatory compliance roadmap, ensuring that it supports the business, sales and revenue objectives while maintaining alliance with existing information security standards. Prior to her time at Datadog, Dominique worked for as a Senior Cloud Security Consultant for Ernst ...
Jacob Ansari
Jacob Ansari
Jacob Ansari worked on Pluralsight courses that cover the topic of PCI DSS Standards.

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