Azure Management Groups in Prowler

Azure Management Groups provide a hierarchy above subscriptions. They allow Azure role assignments and governance policies to apply to multiple subscriptions through a shared scope. For the cross-provider concepts and lifecycle, see Organizations Across Cloud Providers.

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Azure Hierarchy

Azure resources are organized in the following order:

1. Tenant
2. Management groups
3. Subscriptions
4. Resource groups
5. Resources

Prowler scans Azure subscriptions. Management groups help organize those subscriptions and provide a scope where permissions can be assigned, but a management group is not itself a scan target.

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Create a Management Group

To create a management group, follow the official Azure guide. After creating the management group, add the subscriptions that Prowler should access and scan.

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Assign Roles

Assign the roles required by Prowler at the management-group scope instead of assigning them separately to every subscription. Role assignments at a management group can inherit to its child subscriptions, subject to Azure role-assignment and inheritance rules. Use the subscription scope permissions guide to identify the permissions required for scans. The identity used by Prowler must be able to read the management-group hierarchy and access each subscription selected for scanning.

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Subscription Scope

Management groups organize subscriptions, but Azure scan results remain scoped to individual subscriptions:

• Prowler Cloud scans one subscription per scan.
• Prowler CLI can scan multiple subscriptions by using the --subscription-ids option.
• A subscription must be accessible to the configured identity before Prowler can scan it.
• Moving a subscription between management groups can change the permissions it inherits and may require a connection test or rediscovery.

See Azure Subscription Scope for subscription selection and CLI options.

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Limitations

• Management groups do not replace subscription providers in Prowler.
• Azure role inheritance depends on the management-group hierarchy and the scope of each assignment; verify access on every subscription selected for scanning.
• The Prowler Cloud workflow is designed around Azure management-group discovery and subscription onboarding. The Prowler CLI workflow still requires explicit subscription selection when restricting scans.
• Changes to management-group membership or role assignments may not be reflected until the hierarchy is refreshed and access is tested again.