Policy as Code (PAC)

Rules govern how infrastructure and applications operate in DevOps and Cloud computing environments. These rules ensure compliance, best practices, and security.

This article will discuss Policy as Code, an approach that ensures consistency, automation, and scalability across cloud environments, DevOps pipelines, and IT infrastructure.

Before discussing Policy as Code, we need to understand what the term policy stands for?

Policy is a rule established to ensure security or compliance. For example, in an organization, employees may be required to clock in at the start of their shift and clock out at closing, an approach to monitor staff activities.

Policies enforce security and compliance across infrastructure, resources, and users in a software development lifecycle.

Policy as Code is an approach that uses code to define, automate, and manage governance, security, and compliance within the DevOps lifecycle in modern cloud environments.

Policy as code falls under Infrastructure as Code (IAC), which is a practice that involves managing, provisioning, and supporting computing infrastructure using code instead of manual processes and settings.

Manual approaches used in implementing policies are slow, especially given the rapid pace of software deployment and the complexity of cloud architectures.

Policy as code works as follows;

Policy Definition: The first step is to define the policies that need to be enforced. These policies are typically written in declarative language, making them easy to understand and implement.

Organizations use frameworks to formalize policies, ensuring they are applied consistently. For example, the Rego language is used with the Open Policy Agent (OPA) framework, while HashiCorp Sentinel has its own policy language for defining and enforcing policies.

These policies are structured in a way that makes them easy to deploy during the development stages.

Integration into CI/CD Pipeline: After Policies are defined, they are integrated into a CI/CD pipeline, ensuring automated compliance checks at the development, testing, and deployment stages.

This ensures that all code changes follow the same policies, maintaining a consistent and iterative compliance process. Additionally, when new code is integrated or an existing code is modified, the CI/CD pipeline carries out policy evaluations against defined policies and enforces compliance by approving, flagging, or rejecting issues.

Automated Evaluation: Policies are evaluated automatically alongside infrastructure and application configurations as the codebase changes. Real-time checks are carried out, so if there's a violation or non-compliance, it is identified and addressed promptly.

These automated checks reduce human error, such as neglect, and ensure that the complaint code is enforced in the development pipeline.

Feedback Loop: This provides instant feedback to developers and operation teams when a policy violation occurs.

The issues are then addressed before deployment, allowing for easy correction during the development stage without impacting the entire codebase.

Without early intervention, errors could require intensive manual checks, potentially disrupting the organization's system. The feedback loop follows a proactive approach, ensuring continuous compliance.

Monitoring and Reporting: After deployment, tools are used to provide compliance reports. These tools monitor the health of deployed systems and ensure that they remain compliant with the organizational policies.

Regular reports provide organizations with visibility into their policy adherence, making it easier to respond to potential issues or risks.

Why is PaC important?

Security and compliance are crucial for any organization. A common example is a developer using Amazon Web Service (AWS) to create a Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket to store sensitive information such as application logs.

If this information is left exposed, it violates security policies and can lead to vulnerabilities. To prevent this, organizations establish policies to enforce security and compliance standards.

In AWS (Amazon Web Service), managing policies for a single Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket, which is a storage container in Amazon Simple Storage Service(S3) used to store and organize objects such as data and logs, is straightforward.

However, many organizations have multiple Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2 - virtual servers) instances, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, making manual policy enforcement complex.

Ensuring that policies are consistently applied to all resources is why the concept of Policy as Code is of the essence.

The importance of Policy as Code is;

Automation: Automated checks within the CI/CD pipeline ensure that compliance is monitored in real-time as code is developed and deployed.

Policy automation in organizations reduces the risk of policy violations, which could lead to compliance penalties or security risks. This policy automation ensures that policy violations are detected and managed immediately

Scalability and Efficiency: Automating policy enforcement eliminates manual processes, reduces human error, and ensures that policies are applied quickly across cloud instances.

This automation enhances operations and makes it easy to scale across diverse cloud and hybrid environments, ensuring that compliance and security are consistent as the infrastructure grows.

Visibility: Implementing Policy as Code enhances visibility into systems, enabling continuous monitoring and reporting on established policies. It helps teams identify potential risks early, allowing timely and informed decision-making.

Additionally, it promotes accountability, as teams understand how their actions impact compliance and security.

Security: Security is one of the main reasons why organizations implement Policy as Code. If security policies are inconsistent or applied manually, they can lead to misconfigurations, complaint failure, and vulnerabilities.

PaC ensures that security policies are automated, version-controlled, and enforced consistently across the infrastructure.

There are different types of PaC tools, such as;

1. Open Policy Agent (OPA): This is a toolset and framework for enforcing policies across the cloud-native stack. It allows policies to be written declaratively as code and used in decision-making processes.

OPA uses Rego policy language, which enables writing policies for different services using a unified language.

2. AWS Config Rules: Provides predefined and customizable rules that AWS uses to check if your AWS resources comply with best practices.

It has a console that guides you through the process of configuring and activating a managed rule. You can also customize the behaviour of a managed rule to suit your needs, among other things.

3. Checkov: This is a tool that scans infrastructure-as-code (IaC) for security vulnerabilities before deployment. It has built-in policies based on best practices that your code is checked against. Additionally, custom policies can be written in Python or YAML.

4. TeraForm Sentinel: This is a Policy-as-Code (PaC) framework by Hashicorp used to define and enforce policies on Teraform configurations. It is integrated into HashiCorp products (e.g., Terraform Cloud), and policies are written in Sentinel's own language.

5. Prisma Cloud: This is a cloud-native security solution from Palo Alto Networks that helps organizations manage the security posture of their cloud environments.

It delivers visibility and offers a comprehensive security and compliance coverage for infrastructure, workloads, and applications across the entire cloud-native technology stack.

Prisma Cloud supports security throughout the development lifecycle and across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

6. OWASP SecurityRat(Requirement Automation Tool): This open-source tool that is designed to automate security requirement management in software development.

Teams can incorporate it into CI/CD pipelines to enforce security best practices into development workflows. Additionally, they can define and modify security requirements based on organization policies.

7. Ansible: Ansible is a tool used to implement policy as code. It is simple, and you can write it in a YAML file. It also provides configuration management and can talk to multiple resources, including AWS APIs.

There are several challenges of PaC, including;

• Complex Implementation: Writing, implementing, and managing policies requires an understanding of policy logic and coding. As the number of policies grows, managing them can become complex, making it difficult for organizations to maintain consistency, which may lead to compliance violations.

Management must implement a robust policy management framework that simplifies structuring and organizing policy definitions.

• Learning Curve: Security teams and developers may require training to write and manage policies as code, which can be resource-intensive. Organizations may need to invest in training programs to equip teams with the necessary skills or seek expert assistance to ensure policies are managed efficiently.

• Integration Issues: Integrating PaC with CI/CD pipelines, cloud services, and infrastructure management tools can be complex, often requiring additional configuration and testing.

To ensure seamless enforcement and avoid disruptions, organizations should use Policies as code tools that align with their development and deployment processes.

Several practicesshould be considered when implementing Policy as Code, including;

1. Keep policies straightforward; this way, they are easy to comprehend and manage otherwise they become confusing and lead to compliance issues.

2. Version control is a practice that organizations use to trace modifications made to policies over time. It makes it easier to know the reason for changes and the period in which they occur.

   Version control also helps development teams roll back to previous versions of a policy implemented in a current version that causes issues.

3. Policies development involves various departments within an organization; therefore, all aspects must be considered, including stakeholders from the development, operations, and security departments.

   This enables organizations to create broad policies that address all necessary areas. These collaborative efforts allow teams to share responsibilities and take ownership of their efforts.

4. Documentation of every policy is necessary for effective management. It should include policy usage, exceptions, and other important details.

   Proper documentation helps both current and new employees with onboarding and ensures the team can reference past decisions when required.

5. Testing should be automated to ensure that policies are enforced as intended and to check if they work properly, preventing compliance issues.

   These tests ensure that issues are identified at the definition level before deployment, and automated testing ensures continuous compliance while also addressing changes in configurations that may affect the policy.

Rules are necessary to ensure security and ensure that companies meet regulatory standards, among many other reasons. Policy as a Code makes it easy to automate these rules, reducing human error and creating a transparent system that drives efficiency.