What do physical safeguards protect against?

Physical safeguards are essential components of a comprehensive compliance strategy, particularly in the context of protecting sensitive health information. They are designed primarily to protect against natural hazards, such as fire or flooding, and unauthorized physical intrusion, which could include theft of equipment or unauthorized access to facilities containing protected health information (PHI).

These safeguards may involve measures like secure storage for physical records, controlled access to facilities with protective locks, surveillance systems, and policies that dictate how staff should interact with facilities and equipment containing sensitive information. By addressing the risk of physical intrusions and minimizing the impact of natural disasters or hazards, physical safeguards help ensure that healthcare organizations maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patient data.

Options that refer to technical malfunctions, narrow access to electronic records, or data loss from network failures pertain more to technical and administrative safeguards rather than the physical security measures that are the focus of physical safeguards.