Which Azure feature helps in monitoring and managing compliance of VMs?

Azure Policy is the feature that specifically helps in monitoring and managing compliance of virtual machines (VMs). It allows users to define rules and effects for their resources to ensure they adhere to organizational standards and compliance requirements. With Azure Policy, administrators can create policies that enforce specific configurations, such as ensuring that VMs have certain tags, are using approved images, or are within specific regions.

Once these policies are in place, they can evaluate existing resources and automatically assess compliance, marking resources that do not meet the defined criteria. This is particularly important in large environments where maintaining consistent compliance can be challenging. Furthermore, Azure Policy provides insights and reports about compliance status over time, making it easier for organizations to manage their resources in accordance with regulations and best practices.

In this context, while features like Azure Security Center and Azure Blueprints also contribute to security and compliance management, their focus is broader and does not emphasize the specific monitoring and managing of compliance for VMs as directly as Azure Policy does. Azure Activity Log serves a different function by tracking operations and changes within Azure resources but lacks the policy enforcement capabilities that Azure Policy provides.