BrunoGabrielli introduces key security and governance improvements to the AMBA-ALZ pattern for Azure, detailing the new Service Health built-in policy and the Monitoring Policy Contributor role.

AMBA-ALZ Pattern: Recent Enhancements to Built-in Policies and Role-Based Access in Azure

Author: BrunoGabrielli
Published: October 8, 2025

Overview

In this update, BrunoGabrielli shares two major enhancements to the AMBA-ALZ (Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts - Azure Landing Zones) pattern, significantly improving operational governance, security, and policy management in Azure environments:

  • Adoption of a new Azure Service Health built-in policy (available as of October 2025)
  • Introduction of the least privileged “Monitoring Policy Contributor” Azure role for managed identities

1. Azure Service Health Built-in Policy

A new built-in policy named “Configure subscriptions to enable service health alert monitoring rule” is now part of the “Deploy Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA-ALZ) for Service Health and Resource Health” initiative.

Key Points

  • Availability: Effective from October 1, 2025
  • Purpose: Allows customers who permit only Azure’s built-in policies to use Service Health monitoring.
  • Trust & Compliance: Ensures feature parity with previous custom policies, increasing trust in ALZ.
  • Deployment:
    • New Deployments: Default behavior, no action required.
    • Existing Deployments: Some pre-deployment steps are required. Detailed guidance is available in the adoption documentation.
  • Combined with: The custom Resource Health policy remains part of the initiative.

2. Monitoring Policy Contributor Role

To address security concerns relating to overprovisioned permissions (frequently flagged by Microsoft Defender for Cloud), a new least-privileged Azure role named Monitoring Policy Contributor was developed jointly with the Azure RBAC team.

Key Points

  • Role Focus: Designed to provide just enough permissions for deploying policies, running remediation tasks (including Azure Monitor alerts), and Resource Group creation.
  • Security Improvement:
    • Reduces permissions from ~6,700 (Contributor role) to only 6 with the new role.
    • Aligns with best practices for least privilege and reduces attack surface.
  • Adoption:
    • New Deployments: Immediately assigned by default.
    • Existing Deployments: Update process documented here.

3. Getting Started & Deployment Options

To get started or update your deployment:

Summary

These enhancements to the AMBA-ALZ pattern make Azure deployments more secure and operationally sound. The move to built-in Service Health policies and least-privileged managed identity roles simplifies compliance, boosts trust, and reduces administrative overhead.

For in-depth deployment steps and to explore AMBA-ALZ further, visit the Azure Governance and Management Blog.

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