Set Up Governance Rules
Implementation Effort: Medium – Setting up governance rules requires coordination between security teams and resource owners, as well as configuration of rule logic and scopes across cloud environments.
User Impact: Medium – Resource owners and their managers receive automated notifications and may need to take action to remediate security recommendations.
Overview
Governance rules in Microsoft Defender for Cloud help organizations enforce accountability and streamline remediation of security recommendations. These rules allow security teams to assign specific owners and due dates to recommendations based on severity, resource type, or environment (Azure, AWS, GCP). Rules can be prioritized, scoped to specific management groups or subscriptions, and configured to respect resource tags for ownership mapping.
Once a rule is triggered, the assigned owner receives weekly email notifications with a list of tasks and deadlines. If overdue, the owner's manager is also notified. This ensures that remediation efforts are tracked and escalated appropriately. Governance rules can also integrate with ticketing systems like ServiceNow for automated workflows.
This capability supports the Zero Trust principle of "Assume Breach" by ensuring that remediation tasks are not only identified but actively managed and enforced, reducing the window of exposure for known vulnerabilities.