AWS RDS DB Instance or Cluster Deletion Protection Disabled

Last updated a month ago on 2025-11-24

Created 2 years ago on 2024-06-28

About

Identifies the modification of an AWS RDS DB instance or cluster to disable the deletionProtection feature. Deletion protection prevents accidental or unauthorized deletion of RDS resources. Adversaries with sufficient permissions may disable this protection as a precursor to destructive actions, including the deletion of databases containing sensitive or business-critical data. This rule alerts when deletionProtection is explicitly set to false on an RDS DB instance or cluster.

Tags

Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS RDSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: ImpactLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

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

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

False Positive Examples

The deletionProtection feature must be disabled as a prerequisite for deletion of a DB instance or cluster. Ensure that the instance should not be modified in this way before taking action.

License

Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type: Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: filebeat-*logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations: aws(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗any where event.dataset == "aws.cloudtrail"
    and event.provider == "rds.amazonaws.com"
    and event.action in ("ModifyDBInstance", "ModifyDBCluster")
    and event.outcome == "success"
    and stringContains(aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters, "deletionProtection=false")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS RDS DB Instance or Cluster Deletion Protection Disabled 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(external, opens in a new tab or window).