Ensure Public IP addresses are Evaluated on a Periodic Basis (Manual)

Public IP Addresses provide tenant accounts with Internet connectivity for resources contained within the tenant. A public IP address may be created during the creation of certain resources in Azure. All Public IP Addresses within the tenant should be periodically reviewed for accuracy and necessity.

Overview

Rationale

Public IP addresses allocated to the tenant should be periodically reviewed if necessary. Public IP Addresses that are not intentionally assigned and controlled present a publicly facing vector for threat actors and significant risk to the tenant.

Default Value

During Virtual Machine and Application creation, a setting may be created, and a public IP may be attached.

Remediation guidance

Azure remediation

This is a manual governance control.

Portal

Open Public IP addresses in Azure Portal.
Review each public IP and attached resource.
Delete unused public IPs.
For required public IPs, enforce restrictive NSG rules.

Azure CLI

az network public-ip list --query "[].{name:name,resourceGroup:resourceGroup,ipAddress:ipAddress,sku:sku.name}" -o table
az network public-ip delete --resource-group <resource-group> --name <public-ip-name>

References

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-services/public-ip-addresses
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/network/public-ip?view=azure-cli-latest

Service-wide remediation

Recommended when many resources are affected: fix the platform baseline first so new resources inherit the secure setting, then remediate the existing flagged resources in batches.

Azure

Use management group or subscription Azure Policy assignments, remediation tasks where supported, landing-zone standards, and IaC modules so drift is prevented at scale.

Operational rollout

Fix the baseline first at the account, subscription, project, cluster, or tenant scope that owns this control.
Remediate the currently affected resources in batches, starting with internet-exposed and production assets.
Re-scan and track approved exceptions with an owner and expiry date.

Query logic

These are the stored checks tied to this control.

Azure Public IP addresses

Connectors

Microsoft Azure

Covered asset types

StaticIP

Expected check: eq []

{
  staticIps {
    ...AssetFragment
  }
}