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An organization has set up a fire alarm. What type of control is this?
A fire alarm is a detective and technical control. It is detective because it identifies or signals that a fire-related event may be occurring. The alarm does not normally stop the fire from starting, and it does not restore damaged assets after the event. Its purpose is to detect indicators such as smoke, heat, or fire and trigger response actions such as evacuation, suppression, emergency communication, or incident handling. It is technical because it operates through engineered or electronic mechanisms rather than through management approval, legal clauses, or purely administrative processes. ISO/IEC 27002:2022 classifies controls using attributes, including control type. Control types include preventive, detective, and corrective. Fire alarms align with the physical security control area because fire is a physical and environmental threat to information processing facilities, equipment, storage media, and supporting infrastructure. The value of the control is timely detection, reducing the chance that a physical event escalates unnoticed into major damage or service disruption. Reference/Chapters: ISO/IEC 27002:2022, Clause 4 control attributes; Control 7.4 Physical security monitoring; Control 7.5 Protecting against physical and environmental threats.