Networking And Content Delivery Skills

Skill 92 of 128

Shieldadvanced

Configures AWS Shield Advanced for enhanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection: subscribing accounts and adding resource protections, enabling automatic application…

4 minutes · 938 words · 7 sections

Install

$ npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill shieldadvanced

$ npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws

» /plugin marketplace add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Domain expertise for configuring AWS Shield Advanced, the paid tier that adds enhanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection, automatic application layer mitigation, attack visibility, expert support, and cost protection on top of the always-on AWS Shield Standard. Covers subscribing and protecting resources, automatic application layer mitigation, health-based detection, Shield Response Team (SRT) access and proactive engagement, event review and cost protection credits, and protection groups.

This skill is a router. Each customer task maps to a procedure file under references/. Read the matching reference in full before acting, then follow its constraints and steps. The reference files are self-contained: each carries its own decision tables, constraints, procedure, and troubleshooting.

Execute commands using the AWS MCP server when connected (sandboxed execution, audit logging, observability). Fall back to the AWS CLI otherwise. Shield Advanced is a global service: its control-plane API calls run in us-east-1, so pass --region us-east-1 on every aws shield command.

Which Shield Advanced task do you need?

Goal	Reference
Decide whether Shield Advanced is needed at all (vs Shield Standard + AWS WAF)	deciding between Shield Standard and Advanced (opens in a new tab)
Subscribe an account and add resources to protection	subscribing to Shield Advanced and protecting resources (opens in a new tab)
Respond to layer 7 floods automatically through AWS WAF	enabling automatic application layer mitigation (opens in a new tab)
Feed resource health into detection with a Route 53 health check	configuring health-based detection (opens in a new tab)
Get the Shield Response Team to act or reach out during an attack	setting up SRT support and proactive engagement (opens in a new tab)
Review a DDoS event and recover attack-driven scaling charges	reviewing DDoS events and requesting cost protection (opens in a new tab)
Treat related resources as one unit for detection	aggregating resources into protection groups (opens in a new tab)

Routing notes

Decide before you subscribe. Shield Advanced is a paid subscription that auto-renews on a one-year commitment. Before subscribing, confirm the customer actually needs it: Shield Standard (free, always on) plus AWS WAF rate-based rules and the AWS WAF Anti-DDoS managed rule group (AWSManagedRulesAntiDDoSRuleSet) covers many layer 7 cases at lower cost. Route to the deciding reference first when the customer has not made that call; route to the waf skill for the WAF rules themselves.
Subscribe and protect comes first. A subscription protects nothing on its own; resources have to be added explicitly. Every other task here assumes the resource is already subscribed and protected. Run the subscribing reference before any of the others if the customer is starting from scratch.
Automatic mitigation vs health-based detection. These are different controls and customers conflate them. Automatic application layer mitigation deploys AWS WAF rules during a layer 7 attack. Health-based detection feeds a Route 53 health check into Shield Advanced’s detection so it reacts sooner. A customer can run either, both, or neither. Pick the reference that matches what they actually want.
Health check is also an SRT prerequisite. Proactive engagement (SRT reaching out) requires a Route 53 health check on the protected resource. If the customer wants proactive engagement, configuring health-based detection is the groundwork. The SRT reference points back to the health-based detection reference for that step.
Protection groups are detection-only. A protection group changes how Shield Advanced detects across a set of resources. It does not apply shared mitigation; automatic mitigation still works per resource. Use the protection-groups reference for detection tuning, not as a mitigation control.
WAF rules, health checks, and org rollout live elsewhere. Authoring the AWS WAF rules, the rate-based rule, or the web ACL is the waf skill. Creating the Route 53 health check is the route53 skill. Rolling Shield Advanced across an organization with Firewall Manager is the firewallmanager skill. This skill wires Shield Advanced to those pieces; it does not build them. AWS WAF is not optional alongside Shield Advanced: you SHOULD recommend an AWS WAF web ACL on every internet-facing protected resource (CloudFront distributions and Application Load Balancers) as defense in depth — Shield Advanced and AWS WAF are complementary layer 3/4 and layer 7 controls, and the rate-based rule that AWS WAF provides is also what cost protection requires.

Logging and monitoring

Visibility into both configuration changes and attack activity matters for every task here.

You SHOULD recommend enabling AWS CloudTrail so all Shield Advanced API calls (subscription, protection, SRT, and protection-group changes) are logged for audit purposes.
You SHOULD recommend enabling SSE-KMS encryption on the CloudTrail log bucket and CloudWatch Logs log group, since CloudTrail records sensitive API metadata (caller identities, resource ARNs, parameters) that must be encrypted at rest.
You SHOULD recommend CloudWatch alarms on Shield Advanced metrics (for example DDoSDetected and DDoSAttackBitsPerSecond) so operations staff are alerted when an event is detected.
You SHOULD recommend encrypting any SNS topics used for those alarms with SSE-KMS, since the notifications carry sensitive event data.
You SHOULD recommend confirming that all SNS topic subscribers for Shield Advanced alarms are authorized personnel approved to receive sensitive DDoS event notifications.

Security considerations

Shield Advanced setup creates IAM trust relationships and exposes log data, so call out the risks and the controls that contain them.

SRT role is a third-party principal. Granting SRT access creates an IAM role that drt.shield.amazonaws.com assumes to act in the account. Scope its trust policy with an aws:SourceAccount condition equal to the account ID to prevent confused-deputy assumption, grant it only the actions it needs, and revoke it with disassociate-drt-role when no longer required.
Log buckets shared with the SRT can leak data. AWS WAF and access logs capture request URIs, headers, and client IPs. Confirm those buckets have server-side encryption and carry no clear-text PII or secrets before sharing them with the SRT.
Least privilege for the operator. Scope the caller’s IAM permissions to the minimum each procedure needs rather than broad Shield or administrator access.
Audit trail. Keep AWS CloudTrail enabled and logging shield:* calls so every configuration change leaves a record.

Additional Resources

About this skill

Trigger

Configures AWS Shield Advanced for enhanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection: subscribing accounts and adding resource protections, enabling automatic application layer (layer 7) mitigation through AWS WAF, configuring health-based detection with Route 53 health checks, setting up Shield Response Team (SRT) access and proactive engagement, reviewing DDoS events and requesting cost protection credits, and aggregating resources into protection groups. Applicable when the user wants stronger DDoS protection for internet-facing resources (CloudFront, Application or Network Load Balancers, Elastic IP addresses, Global Accelerator, or Route 53 hosted zones), wants expert help during an attack, or wants to recover attack-driven scaling charges. Routes to the right per-task procedure in references. Not applicable for authoring AWS WAF rules (waf skill), creating Route 53 health checks (route53 skill), or org-wide Shield Advanced rollout with Firewall Manager (firewallmanager skill).

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

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How this issue was made

Source

github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws, branch main, last pushed 22 September 2026.

Licence

Apache-2.0 — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

128 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 19 distinct layouts observed: plugins/aws-agents-for-devsecops/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/aws-agents/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/aws-core/skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/core-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/analytics-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/database-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/ec2-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/end-user-computing-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/messaging-and-streaming-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/migration-and-modernization-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/networking-and-content-delivery-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/operations-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/quantum-computing-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/resilience-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/security-and-identity-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/serverless-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/storage-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/system-table-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/web-and-mobile-development/*/SKILL.md.

Duplicates collapsed

34 mirror copies folded into their canonical skill — republished for Alternate. Copies match on content hash and on position once a leading per-agent prefix is stripped, because the same skill is routinely shipped under a dozen agent directories with a dozen different hashes.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 65°, chroma 0.174. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Shifted “7 headings” from h1 to h2 so the skill title is the only h1.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Amazon Web Services, declaring 4 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Goal	Reference
Decide whether Shield Advanced is needed at all (vs Shield Standard + AWS WAF)	deciding between Shield Standard and Advanced (opens in a new tab)
Subscribe an account and add resources to protection	subscribing to Shield Advanced and protecting resources (opens in a new tab)
Respond to layer 7 floods automatically through AWS WAF	enabling automatic application layer mitigation (opens in a new tab)
Feed resource health into detection with a Route 53 health check	configuring health-based detection (opens in a new tab)
Get the Shield Response Team to act or reach out during an attack	setting up SRT support and proactive engagement (opens in a new tab)
Review a DDoS event and recover attack-driven scaling charges	reviewing DDoS events and requesting cost protection (opens in a new tab)
Treat related resources as one unit for detection	aggregating resources into protection groups (opens in a new tab)

Routing notes

Decide before you subscribe. Shield Advanced is a paid subscription that auto-renews on a one-year commitment. Before subscribing, confirm the customer actually needs it: Shield Standard (free, always on) plus AWS WAF rate-based rules and the AWS WAF Anti-DDoS managed rule group (AWSManagedRulesAntiDDoSRuleSet) covers many layer 7 cases at lower cost. Route to the deciding reference first when the customer has not made that call; route to the waf skill for the WAF rules themselves.
Subscribe and protect comes first. A subscription protects nothing on its own; resources have to be added explicitly. Every other task here assumes the resource is already subscribed and protected. Run the subscribing reference before any of the others if the customer is starting from scratch.
Automatic mitigation vs health-based detection. These are different controls and customers conflate them. Automatic application layer mitigation deploys AWS WAF rules during a layer 7 attack. Health-based detection feeds a Route 53 health check into Shield Advanced’s detection so it reacts sooner. A customer can run either, both, or neither. Pick the reference that matches what they actually want.
Health check is also an SRT prerequisite. Proactive engagement (SRT reaching out) requires a Route 53 health check on the protected resource. If the customer wants proactive engagement, configuring health-based detection is the groundwork. The SRT reference points back to the health-based detection reference for that step.
Protection groups are detection-only. A protection group changes how Shield Advanced detects across a set of resources. It does not apply shared mitigation; automatic mitigation still works per resource. Use the protection-groups reference for detection tuning, not as a mitigation control.
WAF rules, health checks, and org rollout live elsewhere. Authoring the AWS WAF rules, the rate-based rule, or the web ACL is the waf skill. Creating the Route 53 health check is the route53 skill. Rolling Shield Advanced across an organization with Firewall Manager is the firewallmanager skill. This skill wires Shield Advanced to those pieces; it does not build them. AWS WAF is not optional alongside Shield Advanced: you SHOULD recommend an AWS WAF web ACL on every internet-facing protected resource (CloudFront distributions and Application Load Balancers) as defense in depth — Shield Advanced and AWS WAF are complementary layer 3/4 and layer 7 controls, and the rate-based rule that AWS WAF provides is also what cost protection requires.

Logging and monitoring

Visibility into both configuration changes and attack activity matters for every task here.

You SHOULD recommend enabling AWS CloudTrail so all Shield Advanced API calls (subscription, protection, SRT, and protection-group changes) are logged for audit purposes.
You SHOULD recommend enabling SSE-KMS encryption on the CloudTrail log bucket and CloudWatch Logs log group, since CloudTrail records sensitive API metadata (caller identities, resource ARNs, parameters) that must be encrypted at rest.
You SHOULD recommend CloudWatch alarms on Shield Advanced metrics (for example DDoSDetected and DDoSAttackBitsPerSecond) so operations staff are alerted when an event is detected.
You SHOULD recommend encrypting any SNS topics used for those alarms with SSE-KMS, since the notifications carry sensitive event data.
You SHOULD recommend confirming that all SNS topic subscribers for Shield Advanced alarms are authorized personnel approved to receive sensitive DDoS event notifications.

Security considerations

Shield Advanced setup creates IAM trust relationships and exposes log data, so call out the risks and the controls that contain them.

SRT role is a third-party principal. Granting SRT access creates an IAM role that drt.shield.amazonaws.com assumes to act in the account. Scope its trust policy with an aws:SourceAccount condition equal to the account ID to prevent confused-deputy assumption, grant it only the actions it needs, and revoke it with disassociate-drt-role when no longer required.
Log buckets shared with the SRT can leak data. AWS WAF and access logs capture request URIs, headers, and client IPs. Confirm those buckets have server-side encryption and carry no clear-text PII or secrets before sharing them with the SRT.
Least privilege for the operator. Scope the caller’s IAM permissions to the minimum each procedure needs rather than broad Shield or administrator access.
Audit trail. Keep AWS CloudTrail enabled and logging shield:* calls so every configuration change leaves a record.

Shieldadvanced

AWS Shield Advanced

Overview

Which Shield Advanced task do you need?

Routing notes

Logging and monitoring

Security considerations

Additional Resources

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Shieldadvanced

AWS Shield Advanced

Overview

Which Shield Advanced task do you need?

Routing notes

Logging and monitoring

Security considerations

Additional Resources

Appendix 92.1–92.7

ReferencesMarkdown · 7 files

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Appendix 92.1–92.7

ReferencesMarkdown · 7 files