Azure Policy: A Powerful Governance Feature

Azure Policy is a powerful governance feature that allows you to set rules and enforce compliance across your Azure resources. With Azure Policy, you can define what is and isn’t allowed within your Azure environment, ensuring that your resources are configured and used securely and efficiently.

Predefined Policies and Custom Policies

Azure Policy provides a wide range of predefined policies that cover common security, cost management, and regulatory compliance scenarios. These predefined policies can be easily applied to your subscription, resource group, or individual resources. Additionally, you can create your own custom policies using the JSON format to address specific requirements that are not covered by the predefined policies.

Enforcement Options

Azure Policy allows you to enforce your policies in two ways:

• Deny: This option prevents users from creating or modifying resources that violate the policy.
• Audit: This option generates reports on resources that violate the policy but does not prevent users from creating or modifying them.

Scope

You can apply Azure Policy to a variety of scopes, including:

• Subscription: Apply the policy to all resources within your Azure subscription.
• Resource group: Apply the policy to all resources within a specific resource group.
• Individual resource: Apply the policy to a specific resource.

Benefits of Azure Policy

Using Azure Policy offers several benefits, including:

• Improved security: Enforce security best practices and prevent unauthorized resource configurations.
• Enforced cost management: Control resource usage and prevent unnecessary costs.
• Compliance: Adhere to regulatory requirements and industry standards.
• Streamlined governance: Simplify resource management and enforce consistent policies across your Azure environment.

Examples of Azure Policy Use Cases

Here are some examples of how Azure Policy can be used to enforce compliance and best practices:

• Enforce minimum SQL Server version requirements.
• Ensure all virtual machines have backups.
• Require all resources to use resource tags.
• Enable advanced threat protection on storage accounts.
• Restrict network access to storage accounts.
• Enforce geo-redundant storage for production resources.
• Limit virtual machine size SKUs to control costs.
• Encrypt OS and data disks with customer-managed keys.

Azure Policy is a powerful and versatile tool that can help you achieve consistent, secure, and compliant resource management across your Azure environment. By leveraging predefined policies, creating custom policies, and enforcing compliance at the appropriate scope, you can ensure that your Azure resources are configured and used in a way that aligns with your organizational goals and objectives.