Azure Policy: Enforcing Organisational Compliance

Introduction

Azure Policy is a service within Microsoft Azure that allows organisations to create, assign, and manage policies. These policies enforce rules and effects over resources, helping ensure compliance with corporate standards and service-level agreements. Azure Policy provides an aggregated view to evaluate the overall state of your environment, with the ability to drill down to the per-resource, per-policy granularity. It’s a powerful tool for maintaining governance and ensuring compliance at scale.

Implementation

Azure Policy can be accessed and managed programmatically using PowerShell. Here’s an example of how to create a policy assignment using Azure PowerShell:

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# Connect to Azure
Connect-AzAccount

# Register the Azure Policy Insights resource provider
Register-AzResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace 'Microsoft.PolicyInsights'

# Create a policy assignment
$definition = Get-AzPolicyDefinition | Where-Object { $_.Properties.DisplayName -eq 'Audit VMs that do not use managed disks' }
$rg = Get-AzResourceGroup -Name '<resourceGroupName>'
New-AzPolicyAssignment -Name '<assignmentName>' -DisplayName '<displayName>' -Scope $rg.ResourceId -PolicyDefinition $definition

In this example, we’re creating a policy assignment to audit virtual machines that do not use managed disks. Replace <resourceGroupName>, <assignmentName>, and <displayName> with your own values.

Conclusion

Azure Policy is an essential tool for any organisation using Azure. It helps enforce organisational standards and assess compliance at scale. With its ability to provide an aggregated view of the environment and drill down to the per-resource, per-policy granularity, Azure Policy offers a robust solution for maintaining governance and ensuring compliance in your Azure environment.

Learn More

For more information about Azure Policy, you can refer to the following resources on Microsoft Learn:

These resources provide a wealth of information about Azure Policy and can help you understand the service better and guide you on how to effectively use it in your projects.