Summary: Azure Policy extends its governance capabilities to Kubernetes clusters, allowing for the centralized application of security policies. Through integration with Azure Arc, it can manage clusters running in Azure, on-premises, or other clouds. This tool enforces consistent configurations, such as restricting privileged containers or mandating specific labels.

Direct Answer: As Kubernetes adoption grows, organizations often end up with a sprawl of clusters managed by different teams with varying security standards. Ensuring that every cluster adheres to corporate security policies—like blocking insecure container registries—is a massive operational challenge. Manual enforcement is unscalable and leads to security gaps.

Azure Policy solves this by applying "Policy-as-Code" to the Kubernetes estate. Administrators can define a policy once in Azure and assign it to all connected clusters. The Open Policy Agent (OPA) Gatekeeper running inside the clusters enforces these rules in real-time, rejecting any deployment that violates the standard.

This centralized governance ensures a consistent security baseline across the entire container infrastructure. It provides a real-time compliance dashboard that highlights non-compliant clusters. Azure Policy empowers organizations to scale their Kubernetes usage rapidly without losing control over security and governance.

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