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CloudFormation stack has termination protection enabled

cloudformation_stacks_termination_protection_enabled

Severitymedium
by Prowler

AWS CloudFormation root stacks are evaluated for termination protection. The detection identifies whether termination protection is enabled to block stack deletions on non-nested stacks.

Risk

Without termination protection, human error or automation can delete entire stacks, causing immediate availability loss and potential data destruction of managed resources.

Attackers with delete rights can more easily trigger outages and hinder recovery.

Run this check with Prowler CLI

prowler aws --checks cloudformation_stacks_termination_protection_enabled

Recommendation

Enable termination protection on root stacks for critical workloads. Enforce least privilege on who can alter this setting or delete stacks, require change review via change sets, and apply stack policies plus DeletionPolicy: Retain for data stores for defense in depth.

Remediation

CLI

aws cloudformation update-termination-protection --stack-name <STACK_NAME> --enable-termination-protection

Terraform
Other
  1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console
  2. Select the target stack
  3. Choose Stack actions > Edit termination protection
  4. Select Enable and Save

Source Code

Resource Type

AwsCloudFormationStack

References