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MEDIUMELBReliability

ELB Deletion Protection Disabled

elb-deletion-protection-disabled

What this rule checks

Detects load balancers without deletion protection.

How to fix it

  1. 1Enable deletion protection for production load balancers
  2. 2Use CloudFormation DeletionPolicy: Retain
FlaggedThe ALB has no deletion protection, so it can be deleted accidentally (e.g. a stray CloudFormation change).
import * as ec2 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-ec2';
import * as elbv2 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-elasticloadbalancingv2';

const vpc = new ec2.Vpc(this, 'Vpc');
new elbv2.ApplicationLoadBalancer(this, 'Alb', { vpc });
FixeddeletionProtection: true sets the deletion_protection.enabled attribute so the load balancer cannot be deleted until it is turned off.
import * as ec2 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-ec2';
import * as elbv2 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-elasticloadbalancingv2';

const vpc = new ec2.Vpc(this, 'Vpc');
new elbv2.ApplicationLoadBalancer(this, 'Alb', { vpc, deletionProtection: 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

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::LoadBalancer

Compliance frameworks

SOC2HIPAANIST

AWS documentation

Read the AWS guidance

Intentional? Suppress this finding

Sometimes a flag is deliberate โ€” a genuinely public endpoint, say. You can dismiss elb-deletion-protection-disabled and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "elb-deletion-protection-disabled", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

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

Use the rule ID elb-deletion-protection-disabled shown above โ€” not the CDK-* ID from SARIF / GitHub code scanning. To dismiss every finding on one construct instead, use ignorePaths. Suppression docs โ†’

Catch this in your stack

$ npx cdk-insights scan

CDK Insights runs this and 118+ other rules locally against your synthesised CDK app โ€” free, no account, your code never leaves your machine.

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