Secrets Manager Secret Without Rotation

What this rule checks

Detects Secrets Manager secrets with no rotation schedule in the template — static credentials that never expire.

How to fix it

1. 1Add a rotation schedule (secret.addRotationSchedule(...) in CDK)
2. 2For database credentials, prefer RDS ManageMasterUserPassword
3. 3If the secret cannot rotate by design, suppress this rule to record the decision

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

new secretsmanager.Secret(this, 'ApiKey');

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

const secret = new secretsmanager.Secret(this, 'ApiKey');

new secretsmanager.CfnRotationSchedule(this, 'Rotation', {
  secretId: secret.secretArn,
  rotationLambdaArn:
    'arn:aws:lambda:eu-west-2:111122223333:function:rotate-api-key',
  rotationRules: { automaticallyAfterDays: 30 },
});

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 secrets-manager-rotation-missing and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "secrets-manager-rotation-missing", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

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

Use the rule ID secrets-manager-rotation-missing 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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