Citicus ICS vs ICSREF: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Citicus ICS is a commercial industrial control system security tool by Citicus. ICSREF 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 operators managing SCADA, DCS, or PLC environments should choose Citicus ICS if your team lacks a structured, ICS-native approach to risk quantification and remediation tracking. The platform's five-factor risk scorecard and PDCA lifecycle directly address NIST CSF 2.0 Risk Assessment and Risk Management Strategy, with configurable controls mapped to CPNI and NIST 800-82, which matters when regulators audit your control baselines. Skip this if you're a small site with minimal ICS complexity or need real-time threat detection alongside your risk scoring; Citicus is governance and planning, not operational alerting.
OT security teams responsible for CODESYS-based manufacturing environments should pick ICSREF if reverse engineering is your bottleneck; the tool automates what takes analysts weeks manually, and the 179 GitHub stars indicate active use in real deployments. The modular framework design means you're not paying licensing costs to test it against your own binaries first. This isn't useful if your sites run Siemens TIA Portal or Allen-Bradley systems; ICSREF's value is CODESYS-specific, so confirm your install base before allocating analyst time to learn it.
