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Orphaned resources · Medium severity

WAF Web ACL Without Associated Resources

A web ACL is billed per month per ACL plus per rule, and one associated with no resource inspects no requests, the protection it describes is not applied anywhere.

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AWSprovider
Mediumseverity
Savingswhere it shows up
Guidedfix, after a review

AWS

Found, explained, fixed.

Findings with a dollar figure attached, idle, oversized, orphaned, unscheduled and undiscounted spend.

01

Detect

ZopNight checks this automatically across AWS, with read-only access to the account.

02

Explain

Every finding says exactly what to change: Attach or delete the unassociated WAF web ACL. Where the saving can be proven it is priced; where it cannot, the finding says so.

03

Fix

After a guided review, where you confirm the change, ZopNight deletes the resource, then checks the change took.

Applies to
WAF Web ACL on AWS
The fix, by hand
  1. WAFv2 → Web ACLs → the resource → check Associated AWS resources tab.
  2. If unassociated: confirm via CloudTrail there hasn't been a recent disassociation that should be re-applied.
  3. Identify ALB / CloudFront / API Gateway resources that genuinely need WAF protection. Attach this ACL there if so.
  4. If genuinely abandoned: Actions → Delete Web ACL.
  5. Audit rule groups referenced only by this ACL. Delete those too.
  6. WAFv2 charges per Web ACL + per managed rule group; both are meaningful costs at scale.

ZopNight does this for you after a guided review.

Category
Orphaned resources. Resources no longer attached to anything that needs them, such as unattached volumes and unassigned IPs.
Where it appears
The Savings tab of Recommendations, with every affected resource listed.
Rule ID
RC-197
Full reference

WAF Web ACL Without Associated Resources

Related checks

See the orphaned resources in your account.

Connect a read-only role and the first pass runs on your own estate. This check, and the rest of the catalogue, with it.

Prefer to talk it through first? Book 20 minutes with the team.

  • $30M+annualised cloud spend under management
  • 550K+resources tracked since launch
  • 20-60%off the bill in the first month
  • SOC 2Type II report, plus ISO 27001

Figures published on zop.dev.

Multi-cloud automation· Production-ready in 30 min· SOC 2 · ISO 27001· 20–60% off the bill, first month· 4 platforms · 1 console· Multi-cloud automation· Production-ready in 30 min· SOC 2 · ISO 27001· 20–60% off the bill, first month· 4 platforms · 1 console·