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2024/03

Azure Policy Management Best Practices

  1. Version Control: Store your policy definitions in a version-controlled repository. This practice ensures that you can track changes, collaborate effectively, and roll back to previous versions if needed.

  2. Automated Testing: Incorporate policy testing into your CI/CD pipelines. Automated tests can help you catch policy violations early in the development process, reducing the risk of non-compliance.

  3. Policy Documentation: Document your policies clearly, including their purpose, scope, and expected behavior. This documentation helps stakeholders understand the policies and their impact on Azure resources.

  4. Policy Assignment: Assign policies at the appropriate scope (e.g., Management Group, Subscription, Resource Group) based on your organizational requirements. Avoid assigning policies at a broader scope than necessary to prevent unintended consequences.

  5. Policy Exemptions: Use policy exemptions judiciously. Document the reasons for exemptions and periodically review them to ensure they are still valid.

  6. Policy Enforcement: Monitor policy compliance regularly and take corrective action for non-compliant resources. Use Azure Policy's built-in compliance reports and alerts to track policy violations.

  7. Policy Remediation: Implement automated remediation tasks for policy violations where possible. Azure Policy's remediation tasks can help bring non-compliant resources back into compliance automatically.

  8. Policy Monitoring: Continuously monitor policy effectiveness and adjust policies as needed. Regularly review policy violations, exemptions, and compliance trends to refine your policy implementation.

  9. Policy Governance: Establish a governance framework for Azure Policy that includes policy creation, assignment, monitoring, and enforcement processes. Define roles and responsibilities for policy management to ensure accountability.

  10. Policy Lifecycle Management: Define a policy lifecycle management process that covers policy creation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and retirement. Regularly review and update policies to align with changing organizational requirements.

  11. Unique source of truth: Use EPAC, terraform, ARM,.... but use an unique source of truth for your policies.

By following these best practices, you can effectively manage Azure policies and ensure compliance with organizational standards across your Azure environment. Azure Policy plays a crucial role in maintaining governance, security, and compliance, and adopting these practices can help you maximize its benefits.