HIGHEventBridgeReliability

EventBridge Rule Disabled or Has No Targets

eventbridge-dlq-missing

What this rule checks

Detects EventBridge rules that are disabled or have no targets configured, so matched events are silently dropped.

How to fix it

1Enable the rule (set State to ENABLED)
2Attach at least one target to the rule

FlaggedA rule created with no `targets` synthesizes an AWS::Events::Rule with no `Targets`, so every matched event is silently dropped — no action is ever taken. The check flags a rule that has no targets (HIGH, Reliability), and separately flags a rule whose `State` is DISABLED (MEDIUM).

import { Duration } from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import * as events from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-events';

// inside your Stack
new events.Rule(this, 'Rule', {
  schedule: events.Schedule.rate(Duration.hours(1)),
});

FixedAdding at least one target (here an SNS topic) makes the synthesized rule carry a non-empty `Targets` array, so matched events are actually delivered. Because the rule is also left ENABLED (the default), neither the no-targets nor the disabled branch of the check fires.

import { Duration } from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import * as events from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-events';
import * as targets from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-events-targets';
import * as sns from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-sns';

// inside your Stack
const topic = new sns.Topic(this, 'Topic');
new events.Rule(this, 'Rule', {
  schedule: events.Schedule.rate(Duration.hours(1)),
  targets: [new targets.SnsTopic(topic)],
});

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::Events::Rule

AWS documentation

Read the AWS guidance

Intentional? Suppress this finding

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

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "eventbridge-dlq-missing", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

Validations.of(scope).acknowledge({
  id: 'cdk-insights::eventbridge-dlq-missing',
  reason: 'Why this is intentional',
});

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

Catch this in your stack

$ npx cdk-insights scan

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

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