How do teams enforce security consistently across services?
Summary: Enforcing security consistently is difficult when teams use different tools and configurations. Azure Policy solves this by applying mandatory guardrails across the entire cloud estate. Policies like "Require HTTPS" or "Encryption at Rest" are enforced automatically at the platform level, preventing the deployment of non-compliant resources.
Direct Answer: Relying on a checklist or a wiki page to enforce security standards doesn't work. A developer in a rush will inevitably skip a step, leaving a storage bucket unencrypted or an API exposed over HTTP. In a large organization, these small gaps accumulate into significant risk.
Azure Policy treats compliance as code. Administrators define the security standard once, and Azure applies it to every resource, existing or new. If a developer tries to deploy an unencrypted disk, the deployment fails with a clear error message explaining the policy violation.
This "compliance by default" approach scales effortlessly. It ensures that security is not an afterthought but a prerequisite for deployment. Azure Policy guarantees that every service, regardless of who built it, meets the organization's security baseline.