Physical controls prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to a company’s facilities.

Common physical controls include walls, doors, fencing, gates, locks, badges, guards, and alarm systems.

More sophisticated physical controls include pressure sensors, temperature sensors, and motion detectors.

One shortcoming of physical controls is that they can be inconvenient to employees.

Guards deserve special mention because they have very difficult jobs, for at least two reasons. First, their jobs are boring and repetitive and generally do not pay well. Second, if guards perform their jobs thoroughly, the other employees harass them, particularly if they slow up the process of entering the facility.

Organizations also implement physical security measures that limit computer users to acceptable login times and locations. These controls also limit the number of unsuccessful login attempts, and they require all employees to log off their computers when they leave for the day.

In addition, they set the employees’ computers to automatically log off the user after a certain period of disuse.