/shieldadvanced

Subscribing to Shield Advanced and Protecting Resources

Overview

Domain expertise for starting with AWS Shield Advanced: subscribing an account and then explicitly adding resources to protection. Covers the per-account subscription model, the consolidated billing rules customers most often ask about, the load-bearing fact that subscribing protects nothing on its own, and the auto-renewal and unsubscribe behavior that surprises customers later.

Does not cover automatic application layer mitigation, health-based detection, SRT setup, event review, or protection groups; those are separate references. Authoring AWS WAF rules is the waf skill. Rolling Shield Advanced out across an organization with Firewall Manager is the firewallmanager skill.

Execute commands using the AWS MCP server when connected (sandboxed execution, audit logging, observability). Fall back to the AWS CLI otherwise. Shield Advanced control-plane calls run in us-east-1; pass --region us-east-1 on every command.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Workflow
• Decision: which resource type to protect
• Subscribing protects nothing on its own
• Billing model
• Auto-renewal and unsubscribe
• Troubleshooting
• Security considerations
• Procedure
• Additional Resources

Workflow

To subscribe and protect resources end to end, follow the procedure exactly. See the Procedure section below.

The procedure covers:

• Subscribing the account that owns the resources to protect
• Confirming the subscription is active
• Adding each resource to protection by its ARN
• Surfacing the console link to verify protected resources

Decision: which resource type to protect

Constraints:

• You MUST protect a Network Load Balancer or EC2 instance through an Elastic IP address where the resource model requires it, rather than expecting to protect the instance directly
• You SHOULD protect at the CloudFront distribution when an Application Load Balancer sits behind CloudFront, since that is where edge mitigation applies

Subscribing protects nothing on its own

A subscription enables Shield Advanced for the account, but no resource is protected until it is added explicitly. Customers assume subscribing covers everything in the account and discover during or after an attack that nothing was protected.

Constraints:

• You MUST treat adding resources as a required second step right after subscribing, not an optional follow-up
• You MUST confirm at least one resource is protected before telling the customer they are covered

Billing model

The billing model is the most common Shield Advanced question and customers regularly overpay or hold back out of confusion about it.

Constraints:

• You MUST explain that one subscription fee covers all subscribed accounts in the same AWS Organizations consolidated billing family, charged once to the payer account
• You MUST tell the customer each account that owns protected resources still calls create-subscription individually, even though only one fee is charged
• You SHOULD note the payer account itself does not need to be subscribed, since billing routes to the payer regardless
• You SHOULD state that the subscription includes standard AWS WAF costs (web ACL, rules, and request inspection up to 1,500 web ACL capacity units) for Shield-protected resources, while Bot Control, CAPTCHA, and usage above 1,500 web ACL capacity units are not included
• You MUST NOT invent a dollar figure for the subscription fee; point the customer at the current Shield pricing page

Auto-renewal and unsubscribe

The subscription is a commitment that auto-renews, and there is no self-service unsubscribe. A customer who does not know this is surprised at renewal.

Constraints:

• You MUST state before the customer subscribes that the subscription auto-renews by default and that fully unsubscribing requires contacting AWS Support
• You SHOULD note auto-renewal can be disabled, but that disabling renewal is not the same as cancelling the current term

Troubleshooting

Subscribed but a resource is still unprotected

Subscribing does not protect anything. Add the resource with create-protection for its ARN (Procedure).

create-protection fails with an invalid parameter

The resource may already be protected, or the ARN format is wrong (an Elastic IP address uses the allocation-id ARN form). Confirm with list-protections and correct the ARN.

Customer fears duplicate monthly fees across accounts

One fee covers the whole consolidated billing family, charged to the payer. Each account still subscribes individually (Billing model).

A Network Load Balancer cannot be protected directly

Protect it through an attached Elastic IP address (Decision: which resource type to protect).

Security considerations

Subscribing and protecting resources commits the account to a billing term and changes account-wide protection, so call out the risks and the controls that contain them.

• Least privilege for the operator. Scope the caller's IAM permissions to the minimum this procedure needs (shield:CreateSubscription, shield:GetSubscriptionState, shield:CreateProtection, shield:ListProtections) rather than broad Shield or administrator access.
• Audit trail. Keep AWS CloudTrail enabled and logging shield:* calls so every subscription and protection change leaves a record, and confirm the CloudTrail trail uses SSE-KMS encryption on its S3 log bucket and CloudWatch Logs log group, since CloudTrail records contain sensitive API metadata (caller identities, resource ARNs, parameters).
• The subscription auto-renews. The subscription auto-renews by default and fully unsubscribing requires contacting AWS Support; review the subscription's necessity periodically so the account is not committed beyond what it needs.
• Role-based access control. Limit who can subscribe accounts and add protections to authorized personnel through role-based access control rather than granting it broadly.

Procedure

Overview

This procedure subscribes an account to Shield Advanced and adds one or more resources to protection, then surfaces the console link to verify coverage.

Parameters

• account (required): The AWS account that owns the resources to protect. Each owning account must be subscribed.
• resource_arns (required): The ARNs of the resources to protect (CloudFront distribution, Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer via Elastic IP, Elastic IP address, Global Accelerator accelerator, or Route 53 hosted zone).
• protection_names (required): A descriptive name for each protection.

Constraints for parameter acquisition:

• You MUST ask for all required parameters upfront in a single prompt
• You MUST confirm each resource ARN exists and is owned by a subscribed account before protecting

Steps

1. Verify dependencies

Constraints:

• You MUST confirm credentials with aws sts get-caller-identity
• You SHOULD use temporary credentials from an assumed IAM role (for example via IAM Identity Center or an instance profile) rather than long-lived IAM user access keys for these security-sensitive Shield Advanced operations
• You MUST confirm the account owning the resources is the one being subscribed
• You SHOULD scope the caller's IAM permissions to the minimum this procedure needs (shield:CreateSubscription, shield:GetSubscriptionState, shield:CreateProtection, shield:ListProtections) rather than broad Shield or administrator access
• You SHOULD confirm AWS CloudTrail is enabled and logging shield:* calls so every Shield Advanced configuration change leaves an audit trail
• You SHOULD confirm the CloudTrail trail is configured with SSE-KMS encryption on its S3 log bucket and CloudWatch Logs log group, since CloudTrail records contain sensitive API metadata (caller identities, resource ARNs, parameters)

2. Subscribe the account

Constraints:

• You MUST tell the customer the subscription auto-renews and that unsubscribing requires AWS Support before they commit

• You MUST subscribe the account before adding any protection:

  aws shield create-subscription --region us-east-1

• You MUST confirm the subscription is active:

  aws shield get-subscription-state --region us-east-1

3. Add each resource to protection

Constraints:

• You MUST create a protection for each resource ARN:

  aws shield create-protection --name {protection_name} --resource-arn {resource_arn} --region us-east-1

• You MUST capture the ProtectionId from each response

• You MUST NOT consider the account protected until at least one protection exists

• You SHOULD recommend associating an AWS WAF web ACL with every internet-facing protected resource (CloudFront distributions and Application Load Balancers) as defense in depth — Shield Advanced (layer 3/4) and AWS WAF (layer 7) are complementary, and a rate-based AWS WAF rule is also what cost protection eligibility later requires — and point to the waf skill to set it up

4. Confirm and surface the console link

Constraints:

• You MUST list protections to confirm coverage:

  aws shield list-protections --region us-east-1

• You MUST present the Shield protected-resources console link and tell the customer to open it and confirm the resources are listed as protected:

  https://us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com/wafv2/shieldv2#/protections

Example

Example input

{
  "account": "111122223333",
  "resource_arns": ["arn:aws:cloudfront::111122223333:distribution/EDFDVBD6EXAMPLE"],
  "protection_names": ["my-app-distribution"]
}

Example output

Subscribed account 111122223333 to Shield Advanced (auto-renews; unsubscribe via AWS Support).
Protected: my-app-distribution -> arn:aws:cloudfront::111122223333:distribution/EDFDVBD6EXAMPLE
Open the Shield console and confirm the resource is listed as protected:
https://us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com/wafv2/shieldv2#/protections

Troubleshooting

Subscribed but the resource is still unprotected

Subscribing does not protect anything. Add the resource with create-protection (Step 3).

create-protection fails with an invalid parameter

The resource may already be protected, or the ARN format is wrong. Confirm with list-protections and correct the ARN.

A Network Load Balancer cannot be protected directly

Protect it through an attached Elastic IP address (Decision: which resource type to protect).

Additional Resources

• Subscribing to AWS Shield Advanced (AWS WAF, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS Shield Advanced Developer Guide)
• Adding and configuring resource protections with Shield Advanced (AWS WAF, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS Shield Advanced Developer Guide)
• Adding AWS Shield Advanced protection to AWS resources (AWS WAF, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS Shield Advanced Developer Guide)
• AWS Shield Advanced pricing