Referencing reusable entities in AWS WAF
This section explains how reusable entities work in AWS WAF.
Some rules use entities that are reusable and that are managed outside of your web ACLs, either by you, AWS, or an AWS Marketplace seller. When the reusable entity is updated, AWS WAF propagates the update to your rule. For example, if you use an AWS Managed Rules rule group in a web ACL, when AWS updates the rule group, AWS propagates the change to your web ACL, to update its behavior. If you use an IP set statement in a rule, when you update the set, AWS WAF propagates the change to all rules that reference it, so any web ACLs that use those rules are kept up-to-date with your changes.
The following are the reusable entities that you can use in a rule statement.
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IP sets – You create and manage your own IP sets. On the console, you can access these from the navigation pane. For information about managing IP sets, see Creating and managing IP sets and regex pattern sets in AWS WAF.
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Regex match sets – You create and manage your own regex match sets. On the console, you can access these from the navigation pane. For information about managing regex pattern sets, see Creating and managing IP sets and regex pattern sets in AWS WAF.
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AWS Managed Rules rule groups – AWS manages these rule groups. On the console, these are available for your use when you add a managed rule group to your web ACL. For more information about these, see AWS Managed Rules rule groups list.
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AWS Marketplace managed rule groups – AWS Marketplace sellers manage these rule groups and you can subscribe to them to use them. To manage your subscriptions, on the navigation pane of the console, choose AWS Marketplace. The AWS Marketplace managed rule groups are listed when you add a managed rule group to your web ACL. For rule groups that you haven't yet subscribed to, you can find a link to AWS Marketplace on that page as well. For more information about AWS Marketplace seller managed rule groups, see AWS Marketplace managed rule groups.
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Your own rule groups – You manage your own rule groups, usually when you need some behavior that isn't available through the managed rule groups. On the console, you can access these from the navigation pane. For more information, see Managing your own rule groups.
Deleting a referenced set or rule group
When you delete a referenced entity, AWS WAF checks to see if it's currently being used in a web ACL. If AWS WAF finds that it's in use, it warns you. AWS WAF is almost always able to determine if an entity is being referenced by a web ACL. However, in rare cases, it might not be able to do so. If you need to be sure that the entity that you want to delete isn't in use, check for it in your web ACLs before deleting it.
