Overview of a Tag Policy

Introduction

Tag policies are a type of policy that can help you standardize tags across resources in your organization's accounts. In a tag policy, you specify tagging rules applicable to resources when they are tagged. Untagged resources and tags that are not defined in the tag policy are not evaluated for compliance with the tag policy.

For example, a tag policy can specify that a tag attached to a resource must use the case treatment and tag values defined in the tag policy. If the case and value of the tag do not comply with the tag policy, the resource will be marked as non-compliant.

Currently, tag policies can be used as preventive governance policies. Specifically, if enforcement is enabled for a tag policy, non-compliant tagging operations will be prevented from being performed on specified resource types.

You can attach tag policies to the root OU, other OUs, and accounts within your organization. When you attach a tag policy to the root OU and other OUs, all their child OUs and member accounts inherit that tag policy. The effective tag policy for an account specifies the tagging rules that apply to the account. It is the combination of tag policies that account inherits and tag policies directly attached to that account.

Functions

Managing tag policies

You can create, update, delete, attach, or detach tag policies. OUs and accounts inherit tag policies from one or more of their parent nodes (such as parent OUs). The inherited tag policies are aggregated with those directly attached to the OUs and accounts to form the effective tag policy.