Bedrock agent uses a guardrail to protect agent sessions

Check ID: bedrock_agent_guardrail_enabled
Provider: AWS
Service: bedrock
Severity: HIGH
Categories: gen-ai
Resource type: Other

What this check verifies

Bedrock agents should have an associated guardrail for their sessions. The evaluation identifies agents without a guardrail linked for input/output screening during interactions.

Risk

Without guardrails, agent exchanges may expose PII or internal data (confidentiality), accept prompt injections that manipulate tool calls or outputs (integrity), and produce unsafe or out-of-scope responses that erode trust and cause policy violations.

Recommendation

Associate a guardrail with every agent and tailor policies to your use case:

Enable content/word filters, denied topics, and sensitive-data masking
Use contextual grounding for RAG where relevant
Test and iterate across versions Apply least privilege to agent tools and use defense in depth with monitoring and review.

Remediation

CLI
Terraform
Native IaC
Dashboard steps

aws bedrock-agent update-agent --agent-id <agent_id> --agent-name <agent_name> --agent-resource-role-arn <role_arn> --foundation-model <model_id> --guardrail-configuration guardrailIdentifier=<guardrail_id>,guardrailVersion=DRAFT

# Terraform (AWS Cloud Control): Associate a guardrail with a Bedrock Agent
resource "awscc_bedrock_agent" "example" {
  agent_name               = "<example_resource_name>"
  agent_resource_role_arn  = "<example_resource_id>"
  foundation_model         = "<example_resource_name>"
  instruction              = "<example_resource_name>"

  # CRITICAL: associates a guardrail to protect agent sessions
  guardrail_configuration {
    guardrail_identifier = "<example_resource_id>"   # CRITICAL: guardrail ID
    guardrail_version    = "DRAFT"                   # CRITICAL: version applied
  }
}

# CloudFormation: Associate a guardrail with a Bedrock Agent
Resources:
  ExampleAgent:
    Type: AWS::Bedrock::Agent
    Properties:
      AgentName: <example_resource_name>
      AgentResourceRoleArn: <example_resource_id>
      FoundationModel: <example_resource_name>
      Instruction: "<example_resource_name>"
      GuardrailConfiguration:  # CRITICAL: associates a guardrail to protect sessions
        GuardrailIdentifier: <example_resource_id>  # CRITICAL: guardrail ID used by the agent
        GuardrailVersion: DRAFT  # CRITICAL: version applied

References

Where this check fires

This check runs on every scheduled scan against your AWS account. Findings appear at Cloud Security → Findings filterable by Check ID = bedrock_agent_guardrail_enabled. To re-evaluate after a fix, hit Run now on the account’s schedule under Cloud Security → Schedules — the next scan re-checks this control and marks the finding fixed or keeps it persistent.

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What this check verifies

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