NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 AT-3(2) — Physical Security Controls

What this control requires

Trains personnel on operating physical security controls like access devices and alarms, ensuring proper facility security management. This control supports the Physical Access Control System capability within the Awareness and Training family.

In plain English

Trains personnel on operating physical security controls like access devices and alarms, ensuring proper facility security management. In practice, this means you can prove you access management-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

SP 800-53 is the catalogue every U.S. federal authorisation (FedRAMP, FISMA, CMMC) and most regulated industries point at. A missing control surfaces as a Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) item that an Authorizing Official must approve before the Authority To Operate is granted or renewed.

What an auditor looks for

A 3PAO (FedRAMP) or Independent Assessor (NIST RMF) tests against NIST SP 800-53A assessment procedures. For each control they expect a documented implementation that addresses every assessment objective (Examine, Interview, Test) and an implementation summary in the System Security Plan.

Within Awareness and Training, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control AT-3(2)) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Endpoint Protection

MDM. Make MDM enrollment a hard gate for device access (Intune compliance + Conditional Access, or Jamf + Okta device trust). Unmanaged devices simply don't get a session token.

EDR. Deploy CrowdStrike / SentinelOne / Defender for Endpoint to every server and laptop; alert on any host that stops sending telemetry for >24h.

Physical Security

Inheritance. For cloud-only operations, inherit physical controls from the provider's SOC 2 / ISO 27001 report and document the inheritance in the SoA.

Operational checklist

• Access. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Physical. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Protection. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Access Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, access control, system, personnel, controls, security controls, protection, capability.

Evidence to collect

• User Device Scan. MDM compliance state per user device (Intune / Jamf / Workspace ONE).
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Endpoint compliance telemetry (Intune, Jamf) proves managed coverage. Focus: Physical Security Controls.

Common pitfalls

• Pilot MDM rollouts that quietly exclude executives or engineers; carving out the highest-risk users is the most common audit failure.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.10.7 — Physical Access Control

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control PE-3(4) — Lockable Casings
• Control PE-3 — Physical Access Control
• Control PE-2(3) — Restrict Unescorted Access
• Control PE-3(1) — System Access
• Control AC-19 — Access Control For Mobile Devices
• Control PE-2(2) — Two Forms Of Identification

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control AT-3(2)

Topics: endpoint securityphysical securityendpoint protection