Policies

Manage organizational policies.

Policies define the governance rules for your resources. Once created, a policy can be associated with one or more Kafka clusters to enforce constraints on how Kafka is configured and used — by both internal platform teams and remote application teams through self-service access.

Create a Policy

1. Navigate to Policies
2. Click New Policy
3. Fill in the Display Name, Description, Enforcement Action, and add Cluster Rules and/or Topic Rules
4. Click Create Policy

Update a Policy

1. Navigate to Policies
2. Select the policy from the list
3. Update the Description, Enforcement Action, Cluster Rules, and/or Topic Rules
4. Save the changes

Display Name

A unique name that identifies this policy across the organization.

Description

An optional description explaining the purpose or scope of the policy.

Enforcement Action

Controls what happens when a rule in this policy is violated:

Action	Behavior
Audit	Logs violations without blocking. The operation is allowed but recorded.
Block	Rejects non-compliant operations. The Zilla Gateway denies the request.

Cluster Rules

Rules applied at the Kafka cluster level. Use these to define global guardrails that apply regardless of which topic or client is involved.

See Cluster Rules for available rule types.

Topic Rules

Rules applied to Kafka topics matching a specified pattern. Use these to enforce naming conventions, configuration bounds, and lifecycle constraints on topics.

Click Add Topic Rules to define one or more topic rule sets, each scoped to a topic name pattern.

See Topic Rules for available rule types.

How Policies Are Enforced

The Zilla Gateway enforces policies by intercepting Kafka protocol requests. This means:

• Policies are enforced in real time — Kafka clients cannot bypass them by connecting directly through the Gateway.
• Users cannot circumvent policies via the Explore view in the Console.
• Kafka clients connecting as passthrough (without an API Product) are also subject to policy enforcement.