Abstract: A method of monitoring and controlling network traffic within an industrial control system including receiving one or more data packets at a smart network switching system operating software-defined networking, analyzing the one or more data packets at a protocol level within a control plane of the software-defined networking, based on the analysis, determining whether the one or more data packets are authorized data packets, and forwarding a data packet of the one or more data packets to a destination device within a data plane of the software-defined networking upon determining that the data packet is an authorized data packet. The method further includes providing information related to the analysis of the one or more data packets to an out-of-band monitoring and control system for display to a user, and receiving a response communication from the out-of-band monitoring and control system indicating whether the one or more data packets are authorized data packets.