---
title: "Controls"
description: "Track each control's status and progression, understand its components, and filter controls by status."
source: "Guardian Platform"
---
## About controls

A control is a discrete mandate within a policy.

Your team builds compliance to a policy control by control, and each one undergoes its own implementation and audit. As that process progresses, users mark the control with a status to provide a snapshot of its current state.

Key concepts and actions associated with controls include:

- [Understanding control statuses](#understanding-control-statuses)
- [Understanding control progression](#understanding-control-progression)
- [Understanding control components](#understanding-control-components)
- [Filtering controls by status](#filtering-controls-by-status)

## Understanding control statuses

Control statuses help your team track where each control is in its compliance journey.

There are seven control statuses:

- **Not Started**: no declaration or review has been made against the control.
- **In Progress**: a declaration marked the control In Progress.
- **Ready for Review**: a declaration marked the control Ready for Review.
- **In Review**: a review commented General, Accepted, or Questioned.
- **Compliant**: a review marked the control Compliant.
- **Non-compliant**: a review marked the control Non-compliant.
- **Not Applicable**: a review marked the control Not Applicable.

Importantly, a control's status is always informed by the latest declaration or review made against it.

## Understanding control progression

A control's status can update to any status at any time while the policy is active, with one exception:

- **Reviews cannot be made while a control is Not Started or In Progress.** This ensures the implementation team has the opportunity to contribute to a control before the audit team begins their review. Reviews can be made against any other status, including Compliant, Non-compliant, and Not Applicable.

Additionally, below are other clarifying points regarding control statuses and progression:

- **Controls cannot return to Not Started.** Once any declaration has been made against a control, it cannot revert to Not Started.
- **Repeating the current status does not change it.** If a declaration or review results in the same status the control already holds, the status stays the same. For example, if one reviewer submits a General comment and another submits an Accepted comment, the status remains In Review as both result in the same status.
- **Controls marked Not Applicable are removed from a policy's compliance equation.** For example, if a policy has 100 total controls and 5 are marked Not Applicable, only the 95 remaining controls will be considered when calculating that policy's compliance percentage across Guardian dashboards.

## Understanding control components

- **Title**: A short, descriptive name for the control.
- **Control Code**: A unique identifier for the control within its policy.
- **Description**: An explanation of what the control requires.
- **Citations**: Reference sources that support or define the control. A control can have none. On a control's page, select **View Sources** to open them.

For the rules each component follows, see [Controls](./policies.mdx#controls) in Policies.

## Filtering controls by status

To filter controls by status:

1. In the project sidebar, select the applied policy under **Applied Policies**
2. On the applied policy's **Overview**, select the **Status** filter
3. Select the control status/es you wish to filter by

Select a control in the table to open it, or select **Controls** in the sidebar to open the policy's first control. From a control's page, use the **Search controls...** box beside it to jump to another control in the same policy, or, on a narrow screen, open the list from the control's title.

![The Overview of an applied policy: a sidebar headed by the policy's name, with Overview, Controls, Monitoring, Evaluation Logs, and Certification, beside a Policy Compliance summary of 6 controls by status, the policy's details, and the controls table with its search box and Status filter, beside Archive Policy and Export PDF Report.](../../../assets/controls/applied-policy-overview.png)

## Related

- [Declarations and Reviews](./declarations-and-reviews.mdx) — create the statements that set a control's status
- [Atomization](./atomization.mdx) — write controls that each express one obligation
- [Policies](./policies.mdx) — define a policy's controls and apply it to a project
- [Indicators](./indicators.mdx) — monitor a control automatically
- [Roles and Permissions](./roles-and-permissions.mdx) — who can declare, submit for review, and determine outcomes