Systems and methods that can enhance protection of alarms and events within an industrial control environment are provided. An alarm security component employs cryptographic mechanisms and techniques to encrypt alarms and/or events related to field devices of an industrial controller system. Also included is a two-way mutual authentication using cryptography, thereby ensuring that an alarm is a valid alarm and that the clients using the alarms are authorized alarm clients. Effectively, the innovation can regulate access to alarms and events by unauthorized external entities (e.g., monitors and/or users) by employing cryptographic mechanisms.