A policy is a rule that controls a range of hardware and software configuration settings on the managed devices. For example, an administrator can create policies to control browser bookmarks available in the browser, printers to access, and security and system configuration settings on the managed devices.
You can use the policies to create a set of configurations that can be assigned to any number of managed devices. It helps you to provide the devices with a uniform configuration, and it eliminates the need to configure each device separately.
You can assign a policy directly to a device or a user. You can also assign the policy to a folder or group where the user or device is a member. Assigning a policy to device groups rather than device folders is the preferred way, because a device can be a member of multiple device groups, but it can be a member of only one device folder.
On managed devices, each policy type is enforced by a Policy Handler or Enforcer, which makes all the configuration changes necessary to enforce or unenforce the settings in a given policy.