Explore initiatives
Initiatives work alongside policies in Azure Policy. An initiative definition is a set of policy definitions to help track your compliance state for meeting large-scale compliance goals.
Even if you have a single policy, we recommend using initiatives if you anticipate increasing your number of policies over time.
Applying an initiative definition to a specific scope is called an initiative assignment.
Initiative definitions
Initiative definitions simplify the process of managing and assigning policy definitions by grouping sets of policies into a single item.
For example, you can create an initiative named Enable Monitoring in Azure Security Center to monitor security recommendations from Azure Security Center.
Under this example initiative, you would have the following policy definitions:
- Monitor unencrypted SQL Database in Security Center. This policy definition monitors unencrypted SQL databases and servers.
- Monitor OS vulnerabilities in Security Center. This policy definition monitors servers that don't satisfy a specified OS baseline configuration.
- Monitor missing Endpoint Protection in Security Center. This policy definition monitors servers without an endpoint protection agent installed.
Initiative assignments
Like a policy assignment, an initiative assignment is an initiative definition assigned to a specific scope.
Initiative assignments reduce the need to make several initiative definitions for each scope.
Scopes can range from a management group to a resource group. You can assign initiatives in the same way that you assign policies.
You can read more about policy definition and structure at Azure Policy definition structure.