Rules and policies

The security posture of your environment is governed through a two-part framework: Rules and Policies. This separation decouples detection logic from administrative scope, allowing you to apply different security standards to different environments (such as Production vs. Development). You can view and customize rules and policies under Posture Management > Rules & Policies.

Framework Mechanics: Rules vs. Policies

Risks are identified only when a detection rule is associated with a scoped policy.

• Cloud Security Rules: These define the detection logic. A rule specifies the technical criteria for a security violation, such as an unencrypted database, a publicly accessible storage bucket, or an AI model endpoint with insecure configurations.
• Cloud Security Policies: These define the execution scope. A policy is a container that holds a selection of rules and applies them to specific cloud accounts, regions, or asset groups.

Operational Requirement: A Rule does not generate an Issue on the dashboard until it is added to an active Policy.

Functional Scope

The Rules and Policies interface supports all key capabilities of Cortex Data Security:

• Data (DSPM): Storage-level misconfigurations, data residency violations, and sensitive data exposure.
• DDR (Data Detection & Response): Real-time event monitoring for anomalous access or potential exfiltration.
• AI (AI-SPM): AI pipeline components, model endpoint security, and training dataset protection.
• Data Access Governance (DAG): Identity-to-data access paths, over-privileged human/machine identities, and net-effective permissions.

View and Customize Rules and Policies

Navigate to Posture Management > Rules & Policies to view and manage your rules and policies.

Note: For more information, see the Cloud Security Rules and Policies documentation.