Cognito MFA Disabled

What this rule checks

Detects Cognito user pools without MFA enabled.

How to fix it

1. 1Enable MFA (OPTIONAL or ON)
2. 2Configure SMS or TOTP as MFA method

import * as cognito from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-cognito';

// MFA is OFF. Password policy is strong so the password-policy rule stays quiet.
new cognito.CfnUserPool(this, 'Pool', {
  mfaConfiguration: 'OFF',
  policies: {
    passwordPolicy: {
      minimumLength: 14,
      requireLowercase: true,
      requireUppercase: true,
      requireNumbers: true,
      requireSymbols: true,
    },
  },
});

import * as cognito from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-cognito';

// MFA enforced (ON) with a strong password policy.
new cognito.CfnUserPool(this, 'Pool', {
  mfaConfiguration: 'ON',
  enabledMfas: ['SOFTWARE_TOKEN_MFA'],
  policies: {
    passwordPolicy: {
      minimumLength: 14,
      requireLowercase: true,
      requireUppercase: true,
      requireNumbers: true,
      requireSymbols: true,
    },
  },
});

CDK Insights pinpoints the exact file and line in your CDK source for every finding, so you can jump straight to the fix.

Affected resource types

Intentional? Suppress this finding

Sometimes a flag is deliberate — a genuinely public endpoint, say. You can dismiss cognito-mfa-disabled and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "cognito-mfa-disabled", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

Validations.of(scope).acknowledge({
  id: 'cdk-insights::cognito-mfa-disabled',
  reason: 'Why this is intentional',
});

Use the rule ID cognito-mfa-disabled shown above — not the CDK-* ID from SARIF / GitHub code scanning. To dismiss every finding on one construct instead, use ignorePaths. Suppression docs →

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