policydefined

Policydefined is a term used in governance, security, and software policy management to describe policies that have been formally specified and codified within an organization's policy framework. A policydefined policy has explicit objectives, rules, scope, enforcement actions, and an auditable lifecycle.

Definition and scope: Policydefined policies apply to organizational governance as well as technical environments. They articulate what is allowed, required, or prohibited, and are intended to be machine-interpretable where possible, enabling automated enforcement and auditing.

Components: Typical components include the policy’s scope and objectives, decision logic or rules, required actions or prohibitions, exception handling, monitoring criteria, and an auditable log of changes. They are usually versioned and managed through a policy repository.

Relation to policy-as-code and enforcement: In practice, policydefined policies are often implemented as policy-as-code, stored in version control, and evaluated by policy engines at decision points such as access requests or data processing events. This tight coupling supports repeatability and traceability.

Lifecycle and benefits: The lifecycle commonly includes authoring, validation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and periodic review. Benefits include greater consistency, auditability, and faster incident response; challenges include keeping definitions aligned with deployed systems and maintaining readability for diverse stakeholders.

See also: policy as code, governance, access control, compliance.