shieldadvanced
Configures AWS Shield Advanced for enhanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection: subscribing accounts and adding resource protections, enabling automatic application layer (layer 7) mitigation through AWS WAF, configuring health-based detection with Route 53 health checks, setting up Shield Response Team (SRT) access and proactive engagement, reviewing DDoS events and requesting cost protection credits, and aggregating resources into protection groups. Applicable when the user wants stronger DDoS protection for internet-facing resources (CloudFront, Application or Network Load Balancers, Elastic IP addresses, Global Accelerator, or Route 53 hosted zones), wants expert help during an attack, or wants to recover attack-driven scaling charges. Routes to the right per-task procedure in references. Not applicable for authoring AWS WAF rules (waf skill), creating Route 53 health checks (route53 skill), or org-wide Shield Advanced rollout with Firewall Manager (firewallmanager ski
- Installs
- 4K
- Last 24h
- +40
- Trending rank
- #3867
- Security
- Pass
Install
Works with every agent the skills CLI supports.
npx skills add https://github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill shieldadvanced- 01
Install
Run the command in your project. The CLI asks which agents to install for.
- 02
Describe the task
Ask your agent for something this skill covers. It loads shieldadvanced automatically when relevant.
- 03
Review the result
The agent follows the SKILL.md steps, scripts and references bundled with the skill.
Security audits
Independent scans of the skill's instructions and bundled files.
SKILL.md
The instructions your agent reads when the skill is triggered.
AWS Shield Advanced
Overview
Domain expertise for configuring AWS Shield Advanced, the paid tier that adds enhanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection, automatic application layer mitigation, attack visibility, expert support, and cost protection on top of the always-on AWS Shield Standard. Covers subscribing and protecting resources, automatic application layer mitigation, health-based detection, Shield Response Team (SRT) access and proactive engagement, event review and cost protection credits, and protection groups.
This skill is a router. Each customer task maps to a procedure file under references/. Read the
matching reference in full before acting, then follow its constraints and steps. The reference
files are self-contained: each carries its own decision tables, constraints, procedure, and
troubleshooting.
Execute commands using the AWS MCP server when connected (sandboxed execution, audit logging,
observability). Fall back to the AWS CLI otherwise. Shield Advanced is a global service: its
control-plane API calls run in us-east-1, so pass --region us-east-1 on every aws shield
command.
Which Shield Advanced task do you need?
| Goal | Reference |
|---|---|
| Decide whether Shield Advanced is needed at all (vs Shield Standard + AWS WAF) | deciding between Shield Standard and Advanced |
| Subscribe an account and add resources to protection | subscribing to Shield Advanced and protecting resources |
| Respond to layer 7 floods automatically through AWS WAF | enabling automatic application layer mitigation |
| Feed resource health into detection with a Route 53 health check | configuring health-based detection |
| Get the Shield Response Team to act or reach out during an attack | setting up SRT support and proactive engagement |
| Review a DDoS event and recover attack-driven scaling charges | reviewing DDoS events and requesting cost protection |
| Treat related resources as one unit for detection | aggregating resources into protection groups |
Routing notes
- Decide before you subscribe. Shield Advanced is a paid subscription that auto-renews on a
one-year commitment. Before subscribing, confirm the customer actually needs it: Shield Standard
(free, always on) plus AWS WAF rate-based rules and the AWS WAF Anti-DDoS managed rule group
(
AWSManagedRulesAntiDDoSRuleSet) covers many layer 7 cases at lower cost. Route to the deciding reference first when the customer has not made that call; route to the waf skill for the WAF rules themselves. - Subscribe and protect comes first. A subscription protects nothing on its own; resources have to be added explicitly. Every other task here assumes the resource is already subscribed and protected. Run the subscribing reference before any of the others if the customer is starting from scratch.
- Automatic mitigation vs health-based detection. These are different controls and customers conflate them. Automatic application layer mitigation deploys AWS WAF rules during a layer 7 attack. Health-based detection feeds a Route 53 health check into Shield Advanced's detection so it reacts sooner. A customer can run either, both, or neither. Pick the reference that matches what they actually want.
- Health check is also an SRT prerequisite. Proactive engagement (SRT reaching out) requires a Route 53 health check on the protected resource. If the customer wants proactive engagement, configuring health-based detection is the groundwork. The SRT reference points back to the health-based detection reference for that step.
- Protection groups are detection-only. A protection group changes how Shield Advanced detects across a set of resources. It does not apply shared mitigation; automatic mitigation still works per resource. Use the protection-groups reference for detection tuning, not as a mitigation control.
- WAF rules, health checks, and org rollout live elsewhere. Authoring the AWS WAF rules, the rate-based rule, or the web ACL is the waf skill. Creating the Route 53 health check is the route53 skill. Rolling Shield Advanced across an organization with Firewall Manager is the firewallmanager skill. This skill wires Shield Advanced to those pieces; it does not build them. AWS WAF is not optional alongside Shield Advanced: you SHOULD recommend an AWS WAF web ACL on every internet-facing protected resource (CloudFront distributions and Application Load Balancers) as defense in depth — Shield Advanced and AWS WAF are complementary layer 3/4 and layer 7 controls, and the rate-based rule that AWS WAF provides is also what cost protection requires.
Logging and monitoring
Visibility into both configuration changes and attack activity matters for every task here.
- You SHOULD recommend enabling AWS CloudTrail so all Shield Advanced API calls (subscription, protection, SRT, and protection-group changes) are logged for audit purposes.
- You SHOULD recommend enabling SSE-KMS encryption on the CloudTrail log bucket and CloudWatch Logs log group, since CloudTrail records sensitive API metadata (caller identities, resource ARNs, parameters) that must be encrypted at rest.
- You SHOULD recommend CloudWatch alarms on Shield Advanced metrics (for example
DDoSDetectedandDDoSAttackBitsPerSecond) so operations staff are alerted when an event is detected. - You SHOULD recommend encrypting any SNS topics used for those alarms with SSE-KMS, since the notifications carry sensitive event data.
- You SHOULD recommend confirming that all SNS topic subscribers for Shield Advanced alarms are authorized personnel approved to receive sensitive DDoS event notifications.
Security considerations
Shield Advanced setup creates IAM trust relationships and exposes log data, so call out the risks and the controls that contain them.
- SRT role is a third-party principal. Granting SRT access creates an IAM role that
drt.shield.amazonaws.comassumes to act in the account. Scope its trust policy with anaws:SourceAccountcondition equal to the account ID to prevent confused-deputy assumption, grant it only the actions it needs, and revoke it withdisassociate-drt-rolewhen no longer required. - Log buckets shared with the SRT can leak data. AWS WAF and access logs capture request URIs, headers, and client IPs. Confirm those buckets have server-side encryption and carry no clear-text PII or secrets before sharing them with the SRT.
- Least privilege for the operator. Scope the caller's IAM permissions to the minimum each procedure needs rather than broad Shield or administrator access.
- Audit trail. Keep AWS CloudTrail enabled and logging
shield:*calls so every configuration change leaves a record.
Additional Resources
FAQ
What does the shieldadvanced skill do?
Configures AWS Shield Advanced for enhanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection: subscribing accounts and adding resource protections, enabling automatic application layer (layer 7) mitigation through AWS WAF, configuring health-based detection with Route 53 health checks, setting up Shield Response Team (SRT) access and proactive engagement, reviewing DDoS events and requesting cost protection credits, and aggregating resources into protection groups. Applicable when the user wants stronger DDoS protection for internet-facing resources (CloudFront, Application or Network Load Balancers, Elastic IP addresses, Global Accelerator, or Route 53 hosted zones), wants expert help during an attack, or wants to recover attack-driven scaling charges. Routes to the right per-task procedure in references. Not applicable for authoring AWS WAF rules (waf skill), creating Route 53 health checks (route53 skill), or org-wide Shield Advanced rollout with Firewall Manager (firewallmanager ski
How do I install shieldadvanced?
Run npx skills add https://github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill shieldadvanced in your project. The skills CLI detects the agents you use and copies the skill into the right folder. For Claude Code you can also place the skill folder at ~/.claude/skills/shieldadvanced/ (personal) or .claude/skills/shieldadvanced/ (project).
Which AI agents can use shieldadvanced?
Any agent that supports the open Agent Skills format (a folder with a SKILL.md file), including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Cline, OpenCode and more.
Is shieldadvanced safe to install?
Security partners have reviewed it: Gen Agent Trust Hub passed; Socket passed; Snyk passed. As with any skill, read the SKILL.md and bundled scripts before installing.
Who maintains shieldadvanced?
It is published by aws in aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws. It has 4,023 recorded installs.
More from aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
aws-iam
aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Provides verified corrections for IAM behaviors that AI agents frequently get wrong — policy evaluation edge cases, trust policy gotchas, STS session limits, Organizations quirks, and SAML/MFA specifics. Also provides structured workflows for IAM role management and baseline policy generation from application source code or a Terraform plan JSON. Covers condition operator safety (ForAnyValue/ForAllValues with Null checks), bucket policy deny patterns (VPC endpoint restrictions, org paths), confused deputy protection, and service role creation for AWS services (Glue, CloudTrail, Lambda, ECS, etc.) with aws:SourceAccount/aws:SourceArn trust conditions. Applies when creating IAM roles, writing IAM or bucket policies, generating policies from application source code or a Terraform plan JSON, working with STS, Organizations, or condition operators, or any task needing a service or execution role. Does not cover non-IAM authorization like Cognito user-pool policies or app-level RBAC.
aws-serverless
aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Routes serverless requests to a compute form factor and the skill that owns it. Applies first to Lambda, API Gateway, EventBridge, Step Functions and event-driven work while the compute, orchestration or integration choice is open — API backends, webhooks, jobs, cron, queue/stream consumers, durable workflows, event routing, Step Functions vs Durable Functions, and Pipes vs native event source mappings for queues and streams. Decides Event Functions on-demand vs Managed Instances, Web Functions, MicroVMs, EventBridge rules/Scheduler/Pipes/bus, HTTP vs REST API. Owns shared Lambda references (cold starts, SnapStart, concurrency, event sources, function URLs, throttling, troubleshooting). Defers to the specialized skill once a request commits to one form factor or service, or describes its defining feature, even unnamed (durable checkpointing and automatic step retries, Firecracker sandbox, managed instances, Node.js server). Not for EC2, ECS/EKS/Fargate or Amplify hosting.
aws-observability
aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Builds, configures, debugs, and optimizes AWS observability - operator-symptom questions and detecting Omni vs classic CloudWatch. CloudWatch on an already-reporting service: Log Insights, metric/composite/anomaly alarms, custom metrics/EMF, dashboards, X-Ray/ADOT tracing, canaries, CloudTrail, Dynamic Instrumentation (live breakpoints/snapshots), the Application Signals service map, and fleet health views. CloudWatch Omni on an existing Space: SQL over logs and traces, PromQL over metrics, Omni dashboards, Omni alerts, context graph for root cause, programmatic/IaC access (API/SDK/CLI/CloudFormation), driving Omni from a coding agent or skills, and evaluating AI agent quality from traces - on-demand and online scoring of live traffic, readback, custom evaluators. For first-time setup - creating an Omni Space, granting access, ingestion, or ADOT instrumentation for Application Signals (ServiceEvents, CI/CD metadata) or Omni - use setting-up-cloudwatch-observability. Not for app logging
aws-cdk
aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Authors, deploys, and troubleshoots AWS infrastructure using CDK with TypeScript or Python. Covers best practices, stack architecture, and construct patterns. Applies when writing CDK constructs, bootstrapping environments, running cdk deploy/synth/diff, fixing CDK or CloudFormation errors, planning stack structure, importing existing resources, resolving drift, or refactoring stacks without resource replacement.
aws-containers
aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Builds and deploys containerized workloads on Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Elastic Container Service (ECS), Fargate, and ECR (Elastic Container Registry). Covers general EKS knowledge, Karpenter, AWS Load Balancer Controller and leveraging various open source Kubernetes projects with EKS. Covers general ECS knowledge, task definitions, Fargate services, ECS Exec, ECS Express Mode and ECS Managed Instances. Covers general Elastic Beanstalk knowledge, Elastic Beanstalk configuration and platforms supported by Elastic Beanstalk. Covers general ECR knowledge, ECR repository setup and lifecycle policies. Includes recommending, enabling, and reading Amazon ECS Action Logs to troubleshoot control-plane failures (deployment rollback/circuit-breaker, task placement, scaling, task replacement). Applies when deploying, debugging, or optimizing containers on AWS. Should be used instead of relying on internal knowledge for these services.
aws-billing-and-cost-management
aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Analyze AWS costs, find savings, manage budgets, evaluate Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, right-size EC2/Lambda/RDS/EBS with Compute Optimizer, look up service pricing, query CUR with Athena, detect cost anomalies, scope costs to billing views, and monitor Free Tier usage. Triggers on: AWS bill, cost analysis, reduce spend, savings plan, reserved instance, right-size, budget alert, cost optimization, pricing, free tier, cost anomaly, CUR, cost audit, billing view, billing view ARN.
Popular devops & cloud skills
microsoft-foundry
microsoft/azure-skills
Build, deploy, evaluate, optimize, fine-tune, and manage Microsoft Foundry agents, models, and resources end to end. USE FOR: foundry, azd ai agent, azd provision/deploy, hosted agent scaffold/develop/run/deploy/troubleshoot, prompt agent create, managed harness agent create, GitHub Copilot harness agent, create agent, update agent, add tool to agent, invoke agent, agent insights, evaluate agent, batch eval, continuous eval, continuous monitoring, agent CI/CD, optimize prompt, improve prompt, optimize agent instructions, Agent Optimizer scaffold, dataset curation from traces, deploy model, model fine-tuning (SFT/DPO/RFT), Foundry project, RBAC, role assignment, permissions, quota, capacity, region, deployment failure, AI Services, create Foundry resource, knowledge index, customize deployment, onboard, availability, training-data, grader, distillation, large file upload. DO NOT USE FOR: Azure Functions, App Service, general Azure deploy (use azure-deploy), general Azure prep (use azure
azure-diagnostics
microsoft/azure-skills
Debug Azure production issues on Azure using AppLens, Azure Monitor, resource health, and safe triage. WHEN: debug production issues, troubleshoot app service, app service high CPU, app service deployment failure, troubleshoot container apps, container app 503 or target port mismatch, troubleshoot functions, function telemetry missing or stopped after a config/connection-string change, troubleshoot AKS, VM RDP, Linux SSH, VM black screen, can't connect to VM, reset VM password, NSG or firewall blocking, kubectl cannot connect, kube-system/CoreDNS failures, pod pending, crashloop, node not ready, upgrade failures, analyze logs, KQL, insights, image pull failures, cold start issues, health probe failures, resource health, root cause of errors, troubleshoot event hubs, troubleshoot service bus, messaging SDK error, AMQP connection failure, message lock lost, lock renewal during long-running processing, service bus dead letter.
azure-prepare
microsoft/azure-skills
Prepare azd-based Azure projects for deployment: generates azure.yaml, infrastructure (Bicep/Terraform), and Dockerfiles for the Azure Developer CLI (azd) workflow. USE ONLY when the user explicitly wants to use azd as the deployment tool, or the project already has an azure.yaml file. DO NOT USE FOR: non-azd deployments, Python App Service code-only deploys (use python-appservice-deploy), or cross-cloud migration (use azure-cloud-migrate). WHEN: prepare app for azd, create azure.yaml, set up azd infrastructure, modernize app for Azure with azd, deploy with azd, function app, timer trigger, service bus trigger, event-driven function, managed identity, generate Bicep, generate Terraform, create and deploy to Azure.
azure-ai
microsoft/azure-skills
Use for Azure AI: Search, Speech, OpenAI, Document Intelligence. Helps with search, vector/hybrid search, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, transcription, OCR. WHEN: AI Search, query search, vector search, hybrid search, semantic search, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, transcribe, OCR, convert text to speech.
azure-deploy
microsoft/azure-skills
Execute Azure deployments for ALREADY-PREPARED applications that have existing .azure/deployment-plan.md and infrastructure files. DO NOT use this skill when the user asks to CREATE a new application — use azure-prepare instead. This skill runs azd up, azd deploy, terraform apply, and az deployment commands with built-in error recovery. Requires .azure/deployment-plan.md from azure-prepare and validated status from azure-validate. WHEN: "run azd up", "run azd deploy", "execute deployment", "push to production", "push to cloud", "go live", "ship it", "bicep deploy", "terraform apply", "publish to Azure", "launch on Azure". DO NOT USE WHEN: "create and deploy", "build and deploy", "create a new app", "set up infrastructure", "create and deploy to Azure using Terraform" — use azure-prepare for these.
azure-validate
microsoft/azure-skills
Pre-deployment validation for Azure readiness. Run deep checks on configuration, infrastructure (Bicep or Terraform), RBAC role assignments, managed identity permissions, and prerequisites before deploying. WHEN: validate my app, check deployment readiness, run preflight checks, verify configuration, check if ready to deploy, validate azure.yaml, validate Bicep, test before deploying, troubleshoot deployment errors, validate Azure Functions, validate function app, validate serverless deployment, verify RBAC roles, check role assignments, review managed identity permissions, what-if analysis, validate Container Apps deployment.