Centralized Security Rules with AWS Firewall Manager - Deploying WAF and Security Groups Across Your Organization
Learn how to centrally manage WAF rules, Security Groups, and Network Firewall policies across your entire organization, with automatic enforcement on new accounts to maintain a consistent security baseline.
Firewall Manager Overview
AWS Firewall Manager is a security management service that centrally manages firewall rules across your entire organization. It can apply WAF rules, Shield Advanced protections, Security Group rules, Network Firewall policies, and Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall rules across the organization in bulk. When new accounts or resources are added, predefined security policies are automatically applied, ensuring consistent security baseline maintenance. When WAF rules and Security Groups are manually managed in individual accounts, configuration gaps and inconsistencies are prone to occur, but Firewall Manager solves this problem at the organizational level.
Security Policy Design
Firewall Manager security policies are created per policy type (WAF, Shield, Security Group, Network Firewall, DNS Firewall). WAF policies combine managed rule groups (AWS Managed Rules, Marketplace rules) with custom rules and automatically apply them to CloudFront, ALB, and API Gateway. Security Group policies define allowed inbound/outbound rules and offer an option to auto-remediate non-compliant Security Groups (removing non-compliant rules). Network Firewall policies define VPC traffic filtering rules and automatically deploy Network Firewall endpoints to new VPCs. Policy scope can be controlled by OU, tags, or account ID, enabling targeted application to specific environments (production only, specific regions only).
Compliance and Auto-Remediation
The Firewall Manager compliance dashboard monitors the policy compliance status of each account and resource in real time. Non-compliant resources can be handled through auto-remediation (forced application of rules defined in the policy) or notification only (alerting administrators). Integration with Security Hub allows Firewall Manager findings to be managed alongside findings from other security services. Integration with Config rules also enables including Firewall Manager policy compliance status in compliance reports. For more on network security design, related books on Amazon are also a helpful reference.
Firewall Manager Pricing
Firewall Manager costs approximately $100 per month per policy. Since a single policy can be applied across the entire organization (hundreds of accounts), the per-account cost decreases as the number of accounts grows. Charges for each service applied through policies (WAF, Shield Advanced, Network Firewall, etc.) are billed separately. While Firewall Manager's own pricing is fixed, note that usage-based charges for each service increase with the number of rules applied and traffic volume.
Summary
AWS Firewall Manager centrally manages WAF, Security Group, and Network Firewall policies across your entire organization, maintaining a security baseline through automatic enforcement on new accounts and resources. The compliance dashboard and auto-remediation capabilities enable continuous monitoring and improvement of your organization's security posture.