SQS Queue Without Dead-Letter Queue

What this rule checks

Detects SQS queues with no RedrivePolicy, so messages that repeatedly fail processing are lost instead of captured for inspection.

How to fix it

1. 1Add a RedrivePolicy pointing at a dead-letter queue with a sensible maxReceiveCount
2. 2Alarm on the dead-letter queue depth so poison messages are noticed

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

new sqs.CfnQueue(this, 'Queue', {});

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

const dlq = new sqs.CfnQueue(this, 'Dlq', {});
new sqs.CfnQueue(this, 'Queue', {
  redrivePolicy: {
    deadLetterTargetArn: dlq.attrArn,
    maxReceiveCount: 5,
  },
});

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 sqs-queue-no-dlq and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "sqs-queue-no-dlq", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

Validations.of(scope).acknowledge({
  id: 'cdk-insights::sqs-queue-no-dlq',
  reason: 'Why this is intentional',
});

Use the rule ID sqs-queue-no-dlq 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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