Intermediate

Organization Policies

Organization Policies provide centralized, hierarchical controls that apply regardless of IAM permissions. They are your strongest guardrail for preventing resource deletion across your entire GCP organization.

Organization Policy Service Overview

The Organization Policy Service lets you define constraints on how resources can be configured across your GCP hierarchy. Unlike IAM (which controls who can do what), Organization Policies control what can be done at all:

Feature	IAM	Organization Policy
Scope	Per-member (who)	Per-resource hierarchy (what)
Granularity	Individual permissions	Constraint-based rules
Inheritance	Additive (more roles = more access)	Hierarchical (parent policies cascade down)
Override	Deny policies override allow	Child can inherit, merge, or replace parent
Best for	Controlling identity permissions	Enforcing organizational standards

Built-in Constraints for Resource Protection

GCP provides several built-in constraints relevant to preventing resource destruction:

gcloud - List available organization policy constraints

# List all available constraints
gcloud org-policies list-available-constraints \
  --organization=123456789

# Key constraints for resource protection:
# constraints/compute.restrictXpnProjectLienRemoval
#   - Prevents removing project liens on Shared VPC hosts
# constraints/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation
#   - Prevents creating SA keys (forces WIF)
# constraints/gcp.restrictServiceUsage
#   - Restricts which GCP services can be used
# constraints/compute.requireShieldedVm
#   - Requires Shielded VM for all instances

Custom Organization Policy Constraints

For AI agent guardrails, custom constraints let you define exactly what operations to block. Custom organization policy constraints use Common Expression Language (CEL):

YAML - Custom constraint: Prevent project deletion

# custom-constraint-no-project-delete.yaml
name: organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom.preventProjectDeletion
resourceTypes:
  - cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/Project
methodTypes:
  - DELETE
condition: "true"
actionType: DENY
displayName: "Prevent project deletion"
description: "Blocks all project deletion requests across the organization"

gcloud - Create and enforce the custom constraint

# Create the custom constraint
gcloud org-policies set-custom-constraint \
  custom-constraint-no-project-delete.yaml

# Create a policy that enforces it
gcloud org-policies set-policy policy-enforce-no-project-delete.yaml

YAML - Policy enforcement file (policy-enforce-no-project-delete.yaml)

# policy-enforce-no-project-delete.yaml
name: organizations/123456789/policies/custom.preventProjectDeletion
spec:
  rules:
    - enforce: true

Custom Constraints for Key GCP Services

Create custom constraints to prevent deletion of critical resource types:

YAML - Prevent Compute Engine instance deletion

name: organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom.preventComputeInstanceDeletion
resourceTypes:
  - compute.googleapis.com/Instance
methodTypes:
  - DELETE
condition: "true"
actionType: DENY
displayName: "Prevent Compute Engine instance deletion"
description: "Blocks all Compute Engine instance deletion requests"

YAML - Prevent Cloud SQL instance deletion

name: organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom.preventCloudSQLDeletion
resourceTypes:
  - sqladmin.googleapis.com/Instance
methodTypes:
  - DELETE
condition: "true"
actionType: DENY
displayName: "Prevent Cloud SQL instance deletion"
description: "Blocks all Cloud SQL instance deletion requests"

YAML - Prevent GKE cluster deletion

name: organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom.preventGKEClusterDeletion
resourceTypes:
  - container.googleapis.com/Cluster
methodTypes:
  - DELETE
condition: "true"
actionType: DENY
displayName: "Prevent GKE cluster deletion"
description: "Blocks all GKE cluster deletion requests"

Tag-Based Policies for Resource Protection

Instead of blanket denials, use tags to selectively protect resources. This allows agents to delete dev resources but not production ones:

gcloud - Create tags for resource protection

# Create a tag key for protection level
gcloud resource-manager tags keys create protection-level \
  --parent=organizations/123456789 \
  --description="Resource protection level"

# Create tag values
gcloud resource-manager tags values create critical \
  --parent=organizations/123456789/tagKeys/protection-level \
  --description="Critical resource - cannot be deleted"

gcloud resource-manager tags values create standard \
  --parent=organizations/123456789/tagKeys/protection-level \
  --description="Standard resource - normal deletion rules"

# Apply the tag to a critical project
gcloud resource-manager tags bindings create \
  --tag-value=organizations/123456789/tagKeys/protection-level/tagValues/critical \
  --parent=//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/prod-web-app \
  --location=global

YAML - Conditional constraint using tags

# Only prevent deletion on resources tagged as "critical"
name: organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom.preventCriticalDeletion
resourceTypes:
  - compute.googleapis.com/Instance
methodTypes:
  - DELETE
condition: "resource.matchTag('123456789/protection-level', 'critical')"
actionType: DENY
displayName: "Prevent critical resource deletion"
description: "Blocks deletion of resources tagged as critical"

Policy Inheritance and Overrides

Organization policies follow a hierarchical inheritance model:

Default Inheritance
Policies set at the organization level apply to all folders and projects below. A folder inherits from its parent organization, and a project inherits from its parent folder.
Merge Behavior
By default, child policies merge with parent policies. If a parent denies project deletion and a child adds a constraint on VM deletion, both constraints apply.
Override (Reset)
A child resource can reset (override) a parent policy by setting inheritFromParent: false. Use this sparingly — typically only for development environments that need fewer restrictions.
Enforcement Priority
Organization → Folder → Project. The most restrictive effective policy wins when policies conflict.

YAML - Policy with inheritance override for dev folder

# Allow deletion in dev folder only (override parent)
name: folders/987654321/policies/custom.preventProjectDeletion
spec:
  inheritFromParent: false
  rules:
    - enforce: false

⚠

Be cautious with overrides: Overriding parent policies should be restricted to designated administrators. AI agents should never have the orgpolicy.policy.set permission, which would allow them to modify or override organization policies.

Essential Security Foundations Blueprint

Google's Security Foundations Blueprint provides a reference architecture for secure GCP deployments. Key recommendations for AI agent guardrails:

Separate projects per environment: Production, staging, and development in different projects under different folders
Centralized logging: Aggregate all audit logs in a dedicated logging project
Shared VPC: Centralize networking to prevent agents from modifying network configuration
Resource hierarchy: Use folders to group projects by environment, with progressively stricter policies for production
Break-glass procedures: Document and test emergency access procedures for when legitimate deletions are needed

✅

Start with the blueprint: Google's Security Foundations Blueprint provides Terraform modules that implement all these recommendations. Use it as your starting point and customize for your AI agent requirements.

Terraform: Organization Policies

Terraform - Organization policy constraints

# Custom constraint to prevent project deletion
resource "google_org_policy_custom_constraint" "prevent_project_delete" {
  name         = "custom.preventProjectDeletion"
  parent       = "organizations/${var.org_id}"
  display_name = "Prevent Project Deletion"
  description  = "Blocks project deletion across the organization"

  action_type    = "DENY"
  condition      = "true"
  method_types   = ["DELETE"]
  resource_types = ["cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/Project"]
}

# Enforce the constraint at the organization level
resource "google_org_policy_policy" "enforce_no_project_delete" {
  name   = "organizations/${var.org_id}/policies/${google_org_policy_custom_constraint.prevent_project_delete.name}"
  parent = "organizations/${var.org_id}"

  spec {
    rules {
      enforce = "TRUE"
    }
  }
}

# Disable SA key creation (force WIF)
resource "google_org_policy_policy" "disable_sa_key_creation" {
  name   = "organizations/${var.org_id}/policies/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation"
  parent = "organizations/${var.org_id}"

  spec {
    rules {
      enforce = "TRUE"
    }
  }
}

← Previous IAM & Service Accounts Next → Resource Protection

Organization Policies

Organization Policy Service Overview

Built-in Constraints for Resource Protection

Custom Organization Policy Constraints

Custom Constraints for Key GCP Services

Tag-Based Policies for Resource Protection

Policy Inheritance and Overrides

Default Inheritance

Merge Behavior

Override (Reset)

Enforcement Priority

Essential Security Foundations Blueprint

Terraform: Organization Policies