📋Azure Policies

About Azure Policy definitions

Every built-in Azure Policy definition and initiative, refreshed from Azure. Use it to find an existing policy before writing a custom one — the built-in library already covers most common governance requirements.

Effects you will meet most often

• Audit — records non-compliance without blocking anything; the safe way to start.
• Deny — rejects a deployment that breaks the rule.
• DeployIfNotExists — provisions the missing configuration, and needs a managed identity with the right permissions.
• Modify — adds or updates properties such as tags on creation.

How to roll one out

Assign in audit mode first, look at the compliance results over a full deployment cycle, then tighten to deny once you know what would have broken. Initiatives group related definitions so a whole standard can be assigned and reported as one unit, which is how the regulatory compliance baselines are packaged.

Evaluation is not instantaneous: compliance state refreshes roughly every 24 hours, or after a scan is triggered manually, so an empty result immediately after assignment usually means the scan has not run yet.