The first step of the enforcement process with a new policy is to activate it. For this purpose the policy is marked as active, enabling other processes such as test processes to check the state of the policy. At the same time, the new policy will be enforced by the enforcement process whenever there is a reason for it.
Similar to the test process, a problem can occur during the enforcement. However, when an enforcement occurs, the managed object or system is likely to be in an impermissible state. For this reason, enforcement problems are more critical. Similar to the test process, the enforcement process notifies either the refinement process, or the delegation process, or both. It must be decided what to do with the policy causing the problem, such as re-enforcing, stopping enforcement on the particular target which caused the problem, or deactivating the policy.