Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch

You can monitor web requests and web ACLs and rules using Amazon CloudWatch, which collects and processes raw data from AWS WAF and AWS Shield Advanced into readable, near real-time metrics. You can use statistics in Amazon CloudWatch to gain a perspective on how your web application or service is performing. For more information, see What is CloudWatch in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

Note

CloudWatch metrics and alarms are not enabled for Firewall Manager.

Creating Amazon CloudWatch alarms

You can create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that sends an Amazon SNS message when the alarm changes state. An alarm watches a single metric over a time period that you specify, and performs one or more actions based on the value of the metric relative to a specified threshold over a number of time periods. The action is a notification sent to an Amazon SNS topic or Auto Scaling policy. Alarms invoke actions for sustained state changes only. CloudWatch alarms do not invoke actions simply because they are in a particular state; the state must have changed and been maintained for a specified number of periods.

AWS WAF and AWS Shield Advanced metrics and dimensions

Metrics are grouped first by the service namespace, and then by the various dimension combinations within each namespace.

• The AWS WAF namespace is AWS/WAFV2

• The Shield Advanced namespace is AWS/DDoSProtection

Note

AWS WAF reports metrics once a minute.

Shield Advanced reports metrics once a minute during an event and less frequently other times.

Use the following procedures to view the metrics for AWS WAF and AWS Shield Advanced.

To view metrics using the CloudWatch console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. If necessary, change the Region to the one where your AWS resources are located. For CloudFront, choose the US East (N. Virginia) Region.

3. In the navigation pane, under Metrics, choose All metrics and then search under the Browse tab for the service.

To view metrics using the AWS CLI

• For AWS/WAFV2, at a command prompt use the following command:

  aws cloudwatch list-metrics --namespace "AWS/WAFV2"
                         

  For Shield Advanced, at a command prompt use the following command:

  aws cloudwatch list-metrics --namespace "AWS/DDoSProtection"
                         

AWS WAF metrics and dimensions

AWS WAF reports metrics once a minute. AWS WAF provides the following metrics and dimensions in the AWS/WAFV2 namespace.

Web ACL, rule group, and rule metrics
Metric	Description
AllowedRequests	The number of allowed web requests. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
BlockedRequests	The number of blocked web requests. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
CountedRequests	The number of counted web requests. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. A counted web request is one that matches at least one of the rules. Request counting is typically used for testing. Valid statistics: Sum
CaptchaRequests	The number of web requests that had CAPTCHA controls applied. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. A CAPTCHA web request is one that matches a rule that has a CAPTCHA action setting. This metric records all requests that match, regardless of whether they have a valid CAPTCHA token. Valid statistics: Sum
RequestsWithValidCaptchaToken	The number of web requests that had CAPTCHA controls applied and that had a valid CAPTCHA token. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
ChallengeRequests	The number of web requests that had challenge controls applied. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. A challenge web request is one that matches a rule that has a Challenge action setting. This metric records all requests that match, regardless of whether they have a valid challenge token. Valid statistics: Sum
RequestsWithValidChallengeToken	The number of web requests that had challenge controls applied and that had a valid challenge token. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
PassedRequests	The number of passed requests. This is only used for requests that go through a rule group evaluation without matching any of the rule group rules. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Passed requests are requests that don't match any of the rules in the rule group. Valid statistics: Sum

Web ACL, rule group, and rule dimensions
Dimension	Description
Region	Required for all protected resource types except for Amazon CloudFront distributions.
Rule	One of the following: The metric name of the Rule. ALL, which represents all rules within a WebACL or RuleGroup. Default_Action (only when combined with the WebACL dimension), which represents the action assigned to any request whose evaluation wasn't terminated by the action of a rule in the web ACL.
RuleGroup	The metric name of the RuleGroup.
WebACL	The metric name of the WebACL.

Note

For any single web request, AWS WAF emits metrics for at most 100 labels. Your web ACL evaluation can apply more than 100 labels and match against more than 100 labels, but only the first 100 will be reflected in these metrics.

For information about labels, see Labels on web requests.

Label metrics
Metric	Description
AllowedRequests	The number of labels on web requests that had the action setting Allow applied. The labels can have been added at any point during the web request evaluation. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
BlockedRequests	The number of labels on web requests that had the action setting Block applied. The labels can have been added at any point during the web request evaluation. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
CountedRequests	The number of labels added to web requests by rule group rules that have a Count action setting. This metric is only available to the owner of a rule group, for rules inside the rule group. For other cases, the count label metrics are rolled up into the terminating action that was applied to the request, like Allow or Block. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
CaptchaRequests	The number of labels on web requests that had a terminating CAPTCHA action applied. The labels can have been added at any point during the web request evaluation. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
ChallengeRequests	The number of labels on web requests that had a terminating Challenge action applied. The labels can have been added at any point during the web request evaluation. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum

Label dimensions
Dimension	Description
Region	Required for all protected resource types except for Amazon CloudFront distributions.
WebACL	The metric name of the WebACL.
RuleGroup	The metric name of the RuleGroup. Used for the metric CountedRequests.
LabelNamespace	The namespace prefix of the label that was added to the request.
Label	The name of the label that was added to the request.

Free bot visibility metrics
Metric	Description
SampleAllowedRequests	The percentage of sampled requests that have Allow action. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum
SampleBlockedRequests	The percentage of sampled requests that have Block action. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value. Valid statistics: Sum

Free bot visibility dimensions
Dimension	Description
Region	Required for all protected resource types except for Amazon CloudFront distributions.
WebACL	The metric name of the WebACL.
BotCategory	The metric name of the of the detected bot category, based on the web request labels.

AWS Shield Advanced metrics and alarms

This section discusses the metrics and alarms available with AWS Shield Advanced.

AWS Shield Advanced metrics

Shield Advanced reports metrics to Amazon CloudWatch on an AWS resource more frequently during DDoS events than while no events are underway. Shield Advanced reports metrics once a minute during an event, and then once right after the event ends. While no events are underway, Shield Advanced reports metrics once a day, at a time assigned to the resource. This periodic report keeps the metrics active and available for use in custom CloudWatch alarms.

Shield Advanced reports metrics in the US East (N. Virginia) Region, us-east-1 for the following:

• The global services Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53.

• Protection groups. For information about protection groups, see AWS Shield Advanced protection groups.

Detection metrics

Shield Advanced provides the following detection metrics and dimensions in the AWS/DDoSProtection namespace.

Detection metrics
Metric	Description
DDoSDetected	Indicates whether a DDoS event is underway for a particular Amazon Resource Name (ARN). This metric has a non-zero value during an event.
DDoSAttackBitsPerSecond	The number of bits observed during a DDoS event for a particular Amazon Resource Name (ARN). This metric is available only for network and transport layer (layer 3 and layer 4) DDoS events. This metric has a non-zero value during an event. Units: Bits
DDoSAttackPacketsPerSecond	The number of packets observed during a DDoS event for a particular Amazon Resource Name (ARN). This metric is available only for network and transport layer (layer 3 and layer 4) DDoS events. This metric has a non-zero value during an event. Units: Packets
DDoSAttackRequestsPerSecond	The number of requests observed during a DDoS event for a particular Amazon Resource Name (ARN). This metric is available only for layer 7 DDoS events. The metric is reported only for the most significant layer 7 events. This metric has a non-zero value during an event. Units: Requests

Shield Advanced posts the DDoSDetected metric with no other dimensions. The remaining detection metrics include the AttackVector dimensions that correspond to the type of attack, from the following list:

• ACKFlood

• ChargenReflection

• DNSReflection

• GenericUDPReflection

• MemcachedReflection

• MSSQLReflection

• NetBIOSReflection

• NTPReflection

• PortMapper

• RequestFlood

• RIPReflection

• SNMPReflection

• SSDPReflection

• SYNFlood

• UDPFragment

• UDPTraffic

• UDPReflection

Mitigation metrics

Shield Advanced provides the following mitigation metrics and dimensions in the AWS/DDoSProtection namespace.

Mitigation metrics
Metric	Description
VolumePacketsPerSecond	The number of packets per second that were dropped or passed by a mitigation that was deployed in response to a detected event. Units: packets

Mitigation dimensions
Dimension	Description
ResourceArn	Amazon Resource Name (ARN)
MitigationAction	The outcome of an applied mitigation. Possible values are Pass or Drop.

Top contributors metrics

Shield Advanced provides the following mitigation metrics and dimensions in the AWS/DDoSProtection namespace.

Top contributors metrics
Metric	Description
VolumePacketsPerSecond	The number of packets per second for a top contributor. Units: packets
VolumeBitsPerSecond	The number of bits per second for a top contributor. Units: bits

Shield Advanced posts top contributors metrics by dimension combinations that characterize the event contributors. You can use any of the following combinations of dimensions for any of the top contributors metrics:

• ResourceArn, Protocol

• ResourceArn, Protocol, SourcePort

• ResourceArn, Protocol, DestinationPort

• ResourceArn, Protocol, SourceIp

• ResourceArn, Protocol, SourceAsn

• ResourceArn, TcpFlags

Top contributors dimensions
Dimension	Description
ResourceArn	Amazon Resource Name (ARN).
Protocol	IP protocol name, either TCP or UDP.
SourcePort	Source TCP or UDP port.
DestinationPort	Destination TCP or UDP port.
SourceIp	Source IP address.
SourceAsn	Source autonomous system number (ASN).
TcpFlags	A combination of flags present in a TCP packet, separated by a dash (-). Monitored flags are ACK, FIN, RST, SYN. This dimension value always appears sorted alphabetically. For example, ACK-FIN-RST-SYN, ACK-SYN, and FIN-RST.

Creating AWS Shield Advanced alarms

You can use AWS Shield Advanced metrics for Amazon CloudWatch alarms. CloudWatch sends notifications or automatically make changes to the resources that you are monitoring based on rules that you define.

For detailed instructions on creating a CloudWatch alarm, see the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. When creating the alarm on the CloudWatch console, to use the Shield Advanced metrics, after choosing Create an alarm, choose AWSDDOSProtectionMetrics . You can then create an alarm based on a specific volume of traffic, or you can trigger an alarm whenever a metric is non-zero. The second option triggers an alarm for any potential attack that Shield Advanced observes.

Note

The AWSDDOSProtectionMetrics are available only to Shield Advanced customers.

For more information, see What is CloudWatch in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

AWS Firewall Manager notifications

AWS Firewall Manager doesn't record metrics, so you can't create Amazon CloudWatch alarms specifically for Firewall Manager. However, you can configure Amazon SNS notifications to alert you to potential attacks. To create Amazon SNS notifications in Firewall Manager, see Step 4: Configure Amazon SNS notifications and Amazon CloudWatch alarms.