Microsoft Defender for Cloud Use Case: Governance Rules in Action

Andrew Posted on 6:55 am

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Use Case: Governance Rules in Action

Want to enforce Security at Scale with Defender for Cloud Governance Rules? Need a place to start? You are in the right place!

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Governance Rules: Enforcing Security at Scale

How to use Governance Rules in MDC to automate compliance across your cloud estate

🧭 Introduction

Security at scale isn’t just about visibility—it’s about enforcement. As organizations grow their cloud footprint across multiple subscriptions, management groups, and even cloud providers, maintaining consistent security posture becomes exponentially harder.

Enter Governance Rules in Microsoft Defender for Cloud (MDC). These rules allow security teams to define, enforce, and monitor security policies across their environment using automation and policy-as-code principles.

In this post, we’ll explore how Governance Rules work, walk through a real-world use case, and provide technical guidance for deploying them effectively.

🧱 What Are Governance Rules?

Governance Rules in MDC are a way to centrally manage and enforce security policies across multiple Azure subscriptions or management groups. They build on Azure Policy and Defender for Cloud recommendations, allowing you to:

  • Define security requirements (e.g., encryption, network controls, access restrictions)
  • Automatically remediate non-compliant resources
  • Monitor compliance drift over time
  • Align with regulatory frameworks like PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and NIST

Governance Rules are especially powerful when paired with DeployIfNotExists and AuditIfNotExists policy effects, enabling proactive and reactive enforcement.

🏢 Use Case: Enforcing Encryption at Rest for Storage Accounts

Let’s walk through a practical example that many organizations face.

Scenario

A financial services company operates across 20+ Azure subscriptions. Their internal security policy mandates that all Azure Storage accounts must use customer-managed keys (CMK) for encryption at rest, to meet PCI-DSS requirements.

Challenge

Manual audits are time-consuming and error-prone. The company needs a scalable way to enforce this policy across all subscriptions, with automatic remediation and centralized reporting.

Solution: Governance Rule Deployment

Here’s how the security team uses Governance Rules to solve this:

⚙️ Step-by-Step Implementation

1. Define the Policy

Use the built-in Azure Policy definition:

json

{
  "policyDefinitionId": "/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/policyDefinitions/audit-storage-accounts-without-cmk",
  "parameters": {
    "effect": {
      "value": "DeployIfNotExists"
    }
  }
}

This policy audits storage accounts that don’t use CMK and deploys a remediation task to configure encryption using a specified key vault.

2. Create the Governance Rule

In Defender for Cloud:

  • Go to Governance Rules under the MDC blade
  • Click + Add Governance Rule
  • Select the target scope (management group or subscription)
  • Choose the policy definition and configure parameters
  • Set enforcement mode to DeployIfNotExists
  • Assign a remediation resource group for deployment tasks

💡 Pro Tip: Use a naming convention like rg-remediation-central to keep remediation resources organized.

3. Monitor Compliance

Once deployed, MDC will:

  • Continuously scan for non-compliant storage accounts
  • Automatically apply CMK encryption where missing
  • Report compliance status in the Governance Rules dashboard

You can also export compliance data to Log Analytics or integrate with Microsoft Sentinel for alerting and incident response.

📊 Technical Deep Dive: Behind the Scenes

Here’s what’s happening under the hood:

  • Azure Policy evaluates resources against the defined rule
  • Resource Manager triggers remediation tasks via a managed identity
  • Key Vault access policies are updated to allow encryption
  • Storage account properties are modified to point to the CMK

This process is fully automated and repeatable, ensuring that new resources are compliant from day one.

🔄 Integration with CI/CD

To make Governance Rules part of your DevSecOps pipeline:

  • Store policy definitions in Azure Bicep or Terraform
  • Use Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions to deploy rules via Infrastructure-as-Code
  • Validate compliance in pre-deployment stages using Azure Policy Insights

This ensures that developers are building secure-by-default infrastructure, and security teams retain control over enforcement.

🧠 Pro Tips

  • Use Management Groups for broad enforcement across business units.
  • Tag Remediated Resources to track automated changes.
  • Combine with Defender Recommendations for layered security.
  • Schedule Weekly Reviews of compliance drift and remediation logs, ideally with a rotation of team members that will bring fresh eyes to the review.

🏁 Conclusion

Governance Rules in Microsoft Defender for Cloud are a game-changer for enforcing security at scale. By combining policy definitions, automated remediation, and centralized visibility, organizations can move from reactive audits to proactive enforcement.

Whether you’re securing storage accounts, enforcing network rules, or managing access controls, Governance Rules provide the automation and control needed to stay compliant and secure.

🔗 Want to try this yourself?
Start with the built-in policy: Audit Storage Accounts without CMK encryption Then build your own Governance Rule and watch your compliance score climb.