Governance and compliance tools

Understanding Microsoft Azure Management and Governance

Maarten Van den Broeck

Senior Content Developer at DataCamp

Governance and compliance tools overview

Tool	Use
Azure Policy	Enforce standards and best practices by defining and applying rules and policies to resources
Azure Blueprints	Standardize deployments, replicate configurations from existing environments

Used to set rules and standards for resources

Enforces compliance to applicable standards and regulations
Can be set at any level and automatically be inherited by sublevels (e.g., resources take the policy of the resource group)
Automatic remediation: e.g., applying missing tags

Azure Policy

Azure Policies can be grouped into Initiatives:

Groups of related policies for a larger goal
User-defined or built-in for common scenarios or regulations
Example: HIPAA/HITRUST built-in initiative
- MFA (multi-factor authentication) should be enabled
- There should be more than one owner assigned to a subscription
- Automatic check for missing members in the Administrators group

Azure Policy Initiatives

Standardize new cloud subscriptions or deployments

Link between blueprint (what should be deployed) and resources (what was deployed)
Versioning: keep track of updates or revert to a previous working version

Azure Blueprints

Each component of a blueprint is called an Artifact

Contain parameters that can be specified
Configuration either in blueprint or at deployment
Examples:
- Role assignments
- Policy assignments
- Resource group configuration
- Predefined resource templates

Artifacts during Blueprint creation

You are responsible for implementing best practices for network security, such as disabling public Internet access based on specific rules

With Azure Policy: implement a set of rules that blocks or restricts public Internet access
With Azure Blueprints: assign above policy as an Artefact to automatically include it in new deployments

GIF showing the creation of a no public Internet access policy

Understanding Microsoft Azure Management and Governance