A policy adds run-time governance capabilities to a virtual service or a Connector Virtual Service. A policy is a sequence of actions that are carried out by CloudStreams when a consumer requests a particular service through CloudStreams.

The actions in a policy perform activities such as identifying/authenticating consumers, validating digital signatures and capturing performance measurements. An action is a single task that is included in a policy and is evaluated by CloudStreams at run time. Actions have one or more parameters, which you configure when you insert the actions into a policy. For example, an action that identifies consumers specifies one or more identifiers to identify the consumers who are trying to access the services.

CloudStreams provides built-in action templates. A built-in action template is a definition of an action that can be used in a policy. An action template specifies the set of parameters associated with a particular policy action. You can use these action templates to create actions for policies.

When you create a policy, you:

Following is a summary of the kinds of actions you can include in policies for virtual services and Connector Virtual Services. Detailed descriptions of the actions appear later, in The Policy Actions.