Data protection in AWS WAF Classic - AWS WAF, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS Shield Advanced
Deleting resources

Data protection in AWS WAF Classic

Warning

AWS WAF Classic support will end on September 30, 2025.

Note

This is AWS WAF Classic documentation. You should only use this version if you created AWS WAF resources, like rules and web ACLs, in AWS WAF prior to November 2019, and you have not migrated them over to the latest version yet. To migrate your web ACLs, see Migrating your AWS WAF Classic resources to AWS WAF.

For the latest version of AWS WAF, see AWS WAF.

The AWS shared responsibility model applies to data protection in AWS WAF Classic. As described in this model, AWS is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that runs all of the AWS Cloud. You are responsible for maintaining control over your content that is hosted on this infrastructure. You are also responsible for the security configuration and management tasks for the AWS services that you use. For more information about data privacy, see the Data Privacy FAQ. For information about data protection in Europe, see the AWS Shared Responsibility Model and GDPR blog post on the AWS Security Blog.

For data protection purposes, we recommend that you protect AWS account credentials and set up individual users with AWS IAM Identity Center or AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). That way, each user is given only the permissions necessary to fulfill their job duties. We also recommend that you secure your data in the following ways:

  • Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with each account.

  • Use SSL/TLS to communicate with AWS resources. We require TLS 1.2 and recommend TLS 1.3.

  • Set up API and user activity logging with AWS CloudTrail. For information about using CloudTrail trails to capture AWS activities, see Working with CloudTrail trails in the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.

  • Use AWS encryption solutions, along with all default security controls within AWS services.

  • Use advanced managed security services such as Amazon Macie, which assists in discovering and securing sensitive data that is stored in Amazon S3.

  • If you require FIPS 140-3 validated cryptographic modules when accessing AWS through a command line interface or an API, use a FIPS endpoint. For more information about the available FIPS endpoints, see Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3.

We strongly recommend that you never put confidential or sensitive information, such as your customers' email addresses, into tags or free-form text fields such as a Name field. This includes when you work with AWS WAF Classic or other AWS services using the console, API, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs. Any data that you enter into tags or free-form text fields used for names may be used for billing or diagnostic logs. If you provide a URL to an external server, we strongly recommend that you do not include credentials information in the URL to validate your request to that server.

AWS WAF Classic entities—such as web ACLs, rules, and conditions—are encrypted at rest, except in certain Regions where encryption is not available, including China (Beijing) and China (Ningxia). Unique encryption keys are used for each Region.

Deleting AWS WAF Classic resources

You can delete the resources that you create in AWS WAF Classic. See the guidance for each resource type in following sections.