3.3.1. 💡 First Principle: Azure Policy

First Principle: Azure Policy is a governance service that enforces organizational standards and assesses compliance at scale. Its core purpose is to ensure that all resources in Azure adhere to corporate rules and regulatory requirements, enabling automated and consistent governance.

What It Is: A service in Azure that you use to create, assign, and manage policies. These policies enforce rules over your resources so those resources stay compliant with your corporate standards.

How It Works:

• You define a policy definition (a rule, e.g., "Only allow specific VM sizes").
• You can group multiple policy definitions into an initiative (or policy set) (e.g., "HIPAA Compliance Initiative").
• You assign the policy or initiative to a specific scope (management group, subscription, or resource group).
• Azure Policy then evaluates resources for compliance and can take action, such as blocking non-compliant deployments or auditing them.

Scenario: A company has a rule that all new resources must have a "CostCenter" tag applied to them for billing purposes. They also want to prevent developers from deploying very large, expensive VMs in their development subscriptions.

Reflection Question: How can Azure Policy be used to automatically enforce both the tagging requirement and the VM size restriction?

💡 Tip: Azure Policy is your tool for enforcing rules. If a question asks how to ensure resources follow a specific standard, the answer is likely Azure Policy.