What is physical security?

Physical security means restricting the physical access to important parts of a network. For example, servers should be kept in a secure area that can only be accessed by authorised people, such as the network manager.

This is important as anyone with the physical access to the secure area could remove hard disks containing confidential data and cause a data breach

Physical security concerns safety measures put in place in a physical sense (i.e. protecting the actual hardware that the system is run on). For example, the servers of a system should be kept in a secure location which can only be accessed by network managers.

Any method of securing the hardware of a computer from physical removal. Locking door; ID swipe cards; CCTV etc

Physical security is part of what is known as a 'defence in depth' Cyber Security strategy. It involves such things as Identity cards for staff, biometric authentication for certain areas of a building and security guards. In essence physical security is used to stop unauthorised people being able to access sensitive data. I hope this helps!