Logical controls are useless if someone can walk out with a server, plug a device into a network port in an empty office, or if a flood destroys the data center. Physical and environmental controls protect facilities, equipment, media and the people who work there. They matter for confidentiality and integrity, because physical access often means full access, and above all for availability, because power, heat, water and fire cause many outages. Even when services run in the cloud, the organization still has offices, network closets, laptops and paper records to protect, and it relies on its providers' physical controls, which it assures through contracts and independent reports.
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