Air Force TFPGA vs LICSTER: 2026 Comparison
Air Force TFPGA is a commercial industrial control system security tool by GrammaTech. LICSTER is a free industrial control system security tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best industrial control system security fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Mid-market and enterprise manufacturers with mission-critical industrial control systems need Air Force TFPGA to detect hardware Trojans and counterfeits at the component level, where supply chain compromise actually enters your infrastructure. The tool requires no golden reference model, meaning you can assess legacy FPGA inventory immediately without waiting for baseline data, and its self-characterization testing directly supports NIST GV.SC supply chain risk management. Skip this if your threat model doesn't include hardware-level adversaries or if you're sourcing components exclusively from tier-one vendors with ironclad provenance; the ROI shrinks fast for organizations with lower supply chain risk exposure.
Academic security teams and ICS researchers with limited budgets should use LICSTER to build hands-on lab environments without licensing overhead; the free testbed lets you model real industrial protocols and attack chains at a fraction of what commercial simulators cost. LICSTER prioritizes fidelity in Identify and Detect functions, letting you test detection logic against authentic MODBUS and DNP3 traffic patterns. Skip it if you need operational production monitoring or vendor support; this is a sandbox for learning, not a runtime security tool.
