> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://cortex-docs.paloaltonetworks.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://cortex-docs.paloaltonetworks.com/appsec-rules/iac-security/monitoring/appsec-aws-319.md).

# CloudWatch alarm actions are not enabled misconfiguration detected in code

## Rule Details

|                        |                                         |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------- |
| Cortex AppSec Rule ID  | APPSEC\_AWS\_319                        |
| Category - Subcategory | Monitoring - Alerting And Notifications |
| Provider               | AWS                                     |
| Severity               | MEDIUM                                  |
| Framework              | Terraform, Terraform Plan               |

## Impact

This rule is verifying that alarm actions in AWS CloudWatch are enabled. AWS CloudWatch is a monitoring service that provides data and actionable insights for AWS applications, resources, and services. Alarm actions are essential functionalities that trigger specific automated responses based on predefined conditions, such as stopping an instance when CPU utilization is too high. If these are not enabled, AWS users may miss alerts on critical issues within their resources and services. Consequently, this could lead to performance degradation, service disruption, or even a security breach. Thus, it's considered a poor security practice not to have CloudWatch alarm actions enabled.

## How to Fix

*Resource:* aws\_cloudwatch\_metric\_alarm

* *Arguments:* actions\_enabled

## To fix the issue indicated by this rule, you will need to ensure that all your CloudWatch alarms have `actions_enabled` not set to `false`. \[source,go]

resource "aws\_cloudwatch\_metric\_alarm" "pass2" { alarm\_name = "alarmname" comparison\_operator = "LessThanThreshold" evaluation\_periods = 1 metric\_name = "HealthyHostCount" namespace = "AWS/NetworkELB" period = 60 statistic = "Average" threshold = var.logstash\_servers\_count alarm\_description = "Number of healthy nodes in Target Group"

* actions\_enabled = true alarm\_actions = \[aws\_sns\_topic.sns.arn] ok\_actions = \[aws\_sns\_topic.sns.arn] dimensions = { TargetGroup = aws\_lb\_target\_group.lb-tg.arn\_suffix LoadBalancer = aws\_lb.lb.arn\_suffix } }

***


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