Automated detection and alert of misconfigured industrial automation devices

Abstract

A method for detecting misconfigured industrial automation devices within an operational technology (OT) network of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and/or distributed control systems (DCSs), each PLC including one or more central processing unit (CPU) cards, one or more communication cards, and one or more input/out (I/O) cards, each I/O card controlling a machine or process in a physical network, the method including parsing a project file that includes information about a PLC and its configuration, and about the logic that runs on the PLC, generating a network layout configured in the project the, based on the results of the parsing, scanning the PLC including extracting information regarding the PLC configuration and the network layout, generating an actual network layout, based on the results of the scanning, and comparing the actual network layout with the network layout configured in the project file, to detect misconfigurations in the project file.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.