Security aspects of today’s automation systems gain increasing importance. One critical point regarding security is the exchange of control data over the network. Recently, cryptographic techniques have been developed that can protect the transmitted data against a malicious interference. However, there are security threats which cannot be prevented using cryptographic techniques. Typical representatives are Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Therefore, this paper presents a novel, generic approach how such DoS attacks can be prevented or, if prevention is not possible, can be detected at least.