NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 PE-23 — Facility Location : iCompaas Support

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5·Control PE-23·high·Component: Physical and Environmental Protection

What this control requires

This control mandates the planning of a facility's location or site, considering physical and environmental hazards such as floods, fires, earthquakes, and terrorism. For existing facilities, the organization must evaluate these hazards within its risk management strategy to mitigate potential impacts on system operations. This control supports the Site Risk Assessment Plan capability within the Physical and Environmental Protection family.
— NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, Control PE-23

In plain English

This control mandates the planning of a facility's location or site, considering physical and environmental hazards such as floods, fires, earthquakes, and terrorism. In practice, this means you can prove you policy 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.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

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 Physical and Environmental Protection, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control PE-23) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

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.

Policy Management

Docs. Keep each policy in version-controlled Markdown alongside the code that implements it; ship a signed PDF snapshot at each annual review and link the SHA into the SoA.

Operational checklist

Policy. 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.
Environmental. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
Scope: management, organization, system, location, controls, protection, assessment, capability.

Evidence to collect

Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Facility Location.

Common pitfalls

Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.

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 3.10.6 — Alternate Work Site

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

References

NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
Catalogue identifier: Control PE-23

Topics: governance riskphysical securityenvironmental controlspolicy management

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 PE-23 — Facility Location