Elastic Security Detection Rules

AWS KMS Customer Managed Key Disabled or Scheduled for Deletion

Last updated 11 days ago on 2025-12-05
Created 3 years ago on 2022-09-21

About

Identifies attempts to disable or schedule the deletion of an AWS customer managed KMS Key. Disabling or scheduling a KMS key for deletion removes the ability to decrypt data encrypted under that key and can permanently destroy access to critical resources. Adversaries may use these operations to cause irreversible data loss, disrupt business operations, impede incident response, or hide evidence of prior activity. Because KMS keys often protect sensitive or regulated data, any modification to their lifecycle should be considered highly sensitive and investigated promptly.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS KMSUse Case: Log AuditingTactic: ImpactLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Impact (TA0040)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Data Destruction (T1485)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
A customer managed KMS key may be disabled or scheduled for deletion by a system administrator. Verify whether the user identity, user agent, and/or hostname should be making changes in your environment. Key deletions by unfamiliar users should be investigated. If known behavior is causing false positives, it can be exempted from the rule.
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
filebeat-*logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations

aws(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
event.dataset: "aws.cloudtrail"
    and event.provider: "kms.amazonaws.com" 
    and event.action: ("DisableKey" or "ScheduleKeyDeletion") 
    and event.outcome: "success"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS KMS Customer Managed Key Disabled or Scheduled for Deletion in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).