CERT Resilience Management Model, Version 1.0

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROLOperationsPurposeThe purpose of Environmental Control is to establish and manage an appropriate level ofphysical, environmental, and geographical controls to support the resilient operations ofservices in organizational facilities.Introductory NotesFacilities are a subset of the physical plant assets of the organization that are relied upon toexecute a service. They are hubs of activity where many of the organization’s servicesintersect, such as office buildings and warehouses. Facilities can be owned by theorganization but just as often are leased from an external provider, and they may evenencompass workers’ homes and other locations where high-value services are physicallyexecuted.People, information, and technology assets “live” within a physical facility—they provide thephysical space for the actions of people (people work in offices), the use and storage ofinformation (such as in file rooms and on servers), and the operation of technologycomponents (such as in data centers and server farms). Because of its nature as an activityhub, when a facility is disrupted, there is often a widespread cascading effect on theoperability of these other assets, impacting mission assurance of associated services andpossibly translating to a failure to achieve organizational goals and objectives.As a complicating factor, organizations frequently execute their services in facilities that theydo not own or control. These arrangements sometimes also mean that the organization’sassets are co-located with the assets of other organizations. This presents challenges notonly for facilities management but for ensuring the operational resilience of services thatdepend on these facilities to meet their missions.The Environmental Control process area addresses the importance of facilities in theoperational resilience of services as well as the unique issues that facility assets inheritbecause of their geographical location and the environment in which they operate. In thisprocess area, facility assets are prioritized according to their value in supporting high-valueorganizational services. Physical, technical, and administrative controls that sustain theoperational viability of facility assets are selected, implemented, and managed, and theeffectiveness of these controls is monitored. In addition, facility risks are identified andmitigated in an attempt to prevent disruption where possible. Because facilities are intricatelytied to the geographical location in which they operate, the unique dependencies of thefacility on its adjacent environment are identified and actively managed.Related Process AreasThe establishment and management of resilience requirements for facility assets isperformed in the Resilience Requirements Development and Resilience RequirementsManagement process areas.119 | CMU/SEI-2010-TR-012