Azure Validate
microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure
Pre-deployment validation for Azure readiness. An agent skill from microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure.
Guidance for Azure Policy — enforcing and auditing governance and security guardrails at scale across Azure with definitions, initiatives, assignments, and remediation tasks.
$ npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a claude-codeProject install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.
$ gh skill install vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills azure-policy --agent claude-codeProject scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/azure-policy .claude/skills/azure-policy && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.
Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/
Install the "azure-policy" agent skill from https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policy into .claude/skills/azure-policy/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "azure-policy", then confirm the skill loads.Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$skill-installer install https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policyType this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.
$ npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a codexProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.
$ gh skill install vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills azure-policy --agent codexProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/azure-policy .agents/skills/azure-policy && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.
Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/
Install the "azure-policy" agent skill from https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policy into .agents/skills/azure-policy/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "azure-policy", then confirm the skill loads.Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a cursorProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.
$ gh skill install vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills azure-policy --agent cursorProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/azure-policy .cursor/skills/azure-policy && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.
Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/
Install the "azure-policy" agent skill from https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policy into .cursor/skills/azure-policy/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "azure-policy", then confirm the skill loads.Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gemini skills install https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git --path skills/azure-policy--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.
$ npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a gemini-cliProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.
$ gh skill install vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills azure-policy --agent gemini-cliProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/azure-policy .gemini/skills/azure-policy && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.
Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "azure-policy" agent skill from https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policy into .gemini/skills/azure-policy/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "azure-policy", then confirm the skill loads.Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gh skill install vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills azure-policyInstalls for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a github-copilotProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/azure-policy .github/skills/azure-policy && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.
GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "azure-policy" agent skill from https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policy into .github/skills/azure-policy/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "azure-policy", then confirm the skill loads.GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a opencodeOpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.
$ gh skill install vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills azure-policy --agent opencodeProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/azure-policy .opencode/skills/azure-policy && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.
OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "azure-policy" agent skill from https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/tree/main/skills/azure-policy into .opencode/skills/azure-policy/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "azure-policy", then confirm the skill loads.OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
azure-policyGuidance for Azure Policy — enforcing and auditing governance and security guardrails at scale across Azure with definitions, initiatives, assignments, and remediation tasks.
Azure Policy is an agent skill from vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills. Guidance for Azure Policy — enforcing and auditing governance and security guardrails at scale across Azure with definitions, initiatives, assignments, and remediation tasks. Covers effects (Audit, Deny, Append, Modify, DeployIfNotExists, AuditIfNotExists), management group inheritance, audit-first rollout, parameterised reusable policies, and exclusion discipline. Powers Defender for Cloud regulatory compliance. WHEN: Azure Policy, governance guardrails, enforce compliance, policy initiative, deny resource…
Its SKILL.md is about 1.9k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.
It sits in Legal & Compliance, covering Regulatory compliance, Infrastructure as code and Authorization and RBAC. It works with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Defender and Bicep. The repository describes itself as: Curated Microsoft Security skills for AI agents - Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Purview, Intune, Security Copilot. The licence is MIT.
7 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.
Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 15f16df. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.
Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):
learn.microsoft.comFrom URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.
Azure Policy loads about 1.9k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 210 tokens; SKILL.md has 763 words of instructions outside code blocks.
Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.
The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.
Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.
The full file from vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills at commit 15f16df, republished under its MIT licence (© vinayaklatthe). 763 words, ~1,923 tokens.
.claude/skills/azure-policy/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).Azure Policy enforces organisational standards and assesses compliance at scale, auditing or preventing non-compliant resource configurations and remediating drift automatically. It's the preventive control plane for an Azure estate and the engine behind Defender for Cloud regulatory compliance.
Implementing preventive and detective governance / security guardrails across subscriptions and management groups. Use this skill to pick effects, design initiatives, and roll out safely.
Do not use this skill for RBAC role choice (azure-role-selector), Defender posture
(defender-for-cloud-hardening), or Bicep / IaC templating.
| Goal | Effect | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Surface non-compliant resources without blocking | Audit | Reporting only; default starting point |
| Block creation / update of non-compliant resources | Deny | Preventive; test in Audit first |
| Add a required tag / property automatically | Modify (or Append) | Mutates the request |
| Deploy a missing related resource (e.g. diagnostic settings) | DeployIfNotExists (DINE) | Managed identity required |
| Surface a missing related resource | AuditIfNotExists (AINE) | Reporting only |
| Conditional logic across many resources | Initiative | Group multiple policies |
| Block guest user creation / specific SKUs | Deny + parameter | Parameterise allowed SKUs |
| Enforce Defender for Cloud baseline | Built-in MCSB initiative | Don't author your own |
Rule of thumb: start with Audit on every new policy for 14-30 days. Review compliance. Move critical controls to Deny. Use DeployIfNotExists for things that should "just be there" (diagnostic settings, defender agents). Never start with Deny tenant-wide.
Use built-in initiatives where they exist — Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (MCSB) is the default. Add regulatory initiatives (CIS, ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, PCI DSS, HIPAA) per compliance scope. Verify: MCSB initiative assigned at root management group; compliance state visible in Defender for Cloud.
Author custom definitions only where built-ins don't exist — Custom policy as ARM
JSON: policyRule (condition + effect), parameters (reusable inputs), metadata
(category). Keep policies single-purpose; group via initiatives.
Initiatives = grouped policies — Bundle related policies (e.g. "Enterprise security baseline" initiative containing 30 policies). Assign initiatives, not individual policies, for manageability.
Scope at management group — Assign at management group for inheritance across child subscriptions. Use exclusions sparingly with documented justification. Verify: assignment scope visible in policy compliance; child subscriptions inherit.
Roll out: Audit → review → Deny — Assign as Audit first. Wait 14-30 days, pull non-compliance list, work with workload owners to remediate or document exceptions. Then switch the assignment to Deny. Verify: non-compliance count down to acceptable baseline before the Deny switch; workload owners notified.
Remediate existing resources with remediation tasks — DeployIfNotExists and
Modify policies only act on new / updated resources. Use remediation tasks to bring
existing resources into compliance. The policy assignment's managed identity performs
the change.
Verify: remediation task created post-assignment; success rate > 95%; failures triaged.
Monitor + integrate with Defender for Cloud — Compliance state is the daily dashboard. Defender for Cloud uses policies for its recommendations - failing recommendation = failing policy.
Create an Azure Policy initiative to enforce a security baseline at the management group scope.How do I deny non-compliant resources and auto-remediate with DeployIfNotExists?Apply governance guardrails at the management group scope with inheritance.Audit resource configuration before switching policies to Deny.Parameterise an allowed-locations policy for reuse across dev / test / prod.Build a remediation task to bring existing resources into compliance.© vinayaklatthe, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file
Just SKILL.md in skills/azure-policy of vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills.
Open the folder on GitHubat commit 15f16df
Azure Policy next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.
| Skill | Stars | Used in | Tokens | Auto-check | Licence | Repo updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Azure Policy this skillvinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills | 175 | — | ~1.9k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Azure Validatemicrosoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure | 255 | 1 repos | ~880 | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Apex Azure Rbacjonathan-vella/apex | 217 | — | ~1.8k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Writing Bicep Templatesmicrosoft-foundry/foundry-agent-webapp | 127 | — | ~1.2k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Apex Entra App Registrationjonathan-vella/apex | 217 | — | ~1.3k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Azure Cache RedisMicrosoftDocs/Agent-Skills | 776 | — | ~2.9k | Automated safety check: Pass | CC-BY-4.0 |
microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure
Pre-deployment validation for Azure readiness. An agent skill from microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure.
jonathan-vella/apex
ANALYSIS SKILL — Find the right Azure RBAC role for an identity with least-privilege access; generate CLI, Bicep, and Terraform code to assign it.
microsoft-foundry/foundry-agent-webapp
Provides Bicep coding standards for Azure infrastructure in this repository.
jonathan-vella/apex
WORKFLOW SKILL — Guides Microsoft Entra ID app registration, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and MSAL integration.
MicrosoftDocs/Agent-Skills
Expert knowledge for Azure Cache for Redis development including troubleshooting, best practices, decision making, architecture & design patterns, security, configuration, and deployment.
MicrosoftDocs/Agent-Skills
Expert knowledge for Azure Enclave development including troubleshooting, best practices, decision making, architecture & design patterns, limits & quotas, security, configuration, and deployment.
vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills
Guidance for designing secure APIs on Azure - authentication, authorization, gateway controls, input validation, rate limiting, secret management, and runtime threat detection - aligned to OWASP API…
vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills
Guidance for securing Azure App Service web apps and APIs — managed identity, Easy Auth with Microsoft Entra ID, network isolation via private endpoints + VNet integration, HTTPS / TLS hardening…
vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills
Guidance for Azure Arc — projecting on-premises, multicloud (AWS/GCP), and edge servers, Kubernetes, and data services into Azure Resource Manager for unified governance, security, and management.
vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills
Guidance for secure remote VM management in Azure using Azure Bastion combined with Defender for Cloud just-in-time (JIT) VM access.
vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills
Guidance for Azure Confidential Computing — protecting data in use through hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs).
vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills
Guidance for Azure DDoS Protection — Network Protection (per-VNet) and IP Protection (per public IP) tiers built on the same always-on Microsoft platform.
Works with
Categories
Guidance for Azure Policy — enforcing and auditing governance and security guardrails at scale across Azure with definitions, initiatives, assignments, and remediation tasks. Azure Policy is an agent skill from vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills. Guidance for Azure Policy — enforcing and auditing governance and security guardrails at scale across Azure with definitions, initiatives, assignments, and remediation tasks.
Azure Policy fits situations like: resource RBAC role choice (use azure-role-selector); defender posture only (use defender-for-cloud-hardening); bicep / IaC templating.
Run `npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/azure-policy in vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills) into .claude/skills/azure-policy in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.
Run `npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/azure-policy in vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills) into .agents/skills/azure-policy in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.
Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill azure-policy -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/azure-policy, .gemini/skills/azure-policy, .github/skills/azure-policy and .opencode/skills/azure-policy in your project.
SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Azure Policy is instructions for the agent only.
SKILL.md names 1 domain. As links in the text: learn.microsoft.com. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.
Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.
Azure Policy is published under the MIT licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.
About 1.9k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7.7k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.
Skills that share tags, products or a category with Azure Policy: Azure Validate (microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure, 255 stars), Apex Azure Rbac (jonathan-vella/apex, 217 stars), Writing Bicep Templates (microsoft-foundry/foundry-agent-webapp, 127 stars) and Apex Entra App Registration (jonathan-vella/apex, 217 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.
vinayaklatthe (a GitHub user) maintains it in vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills, which has 175 GitHub stars. The repository holds 50 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on June 18, 2026.
Source: vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.