canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/amazonaws.com/aws-network-firewall

# AWS Network Firewall

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for AWS Network Firewall, keeping it validated and agent-ready. AWS Network Firewall is a managed stateful firewall and intrusion prevention service for VPC traffic - it deploys firewall endpoints into VPC subnets, enforces stateless and stateful rule groups (5-tuple, domain-list, and Suricata-compatible signature rules), and ties everything together with FirewallPolicies. The 36 endpoints cover Firewall and FirewallPolicy CRUD, RuleGroup management, subnet association, logging configuration, and TLS inspection configuration.

## For AI agents

Provision VPC-level stateful firewalls - manage firewalls, rule groups (5-tuple, domain-list, Suricata), firewall policies, subnet associations, and logging.

## Scope

Does not handle DDoS protection, edge web application firewalling, or DNS-layer filtering - use for VPC-attached stateful firewalling, rule groups, and TLS inspection only.

## Capabilities

- Provision a managed firewall into specified VPC subnets and associate firewall endpoints with route tables
- Define stateless rule groups for 5-tuple matching with priority, action and custom drop actions
- Define stateful rule groups using domain allow/deny lists or Suricata-compatible signatures
- Compose stateless and stateful rule groups into a firewall policy and attach the policy to a firewall
- Enable flow and alert logging to CloudWatch Logs, Kinesis Firehose, or S3 destinations
- Configure TLS inspection profiles to decrypt and inspect TLS traffic terminating in the VPC
- Tag firewalls, policies, and rule groups for cost allocation and IAM scoping

## Use cases

### Centralised Egress Filtering for a Multi-VPC Account

Security teams running a hub-and-spoke VPC topology need to filter egress traffic from every spoke through a central inspection VPC. Network Firewall provisions firewall endpoints in inspection subnets, applies a domain-list stateful rule group that allows only approved external domains, and routes spoke traffic through the firewall via VPC route tables. The agent can codify this as repeatable rule group + firewall policy + firewall associations.

Example prompt: Call CreateRuleGroup with Type=STATEFUL and a RulesSourceList of allowed FQDNs, CreateFirewallPolicy referencing the rule group, then CreateFirewall in the inspection VPC subnets

### Detect and Block Known Threats With Suricata Signatures

Threat-detection teams already maintain Suricata rule sets from threat intel feeds. AWS Network Firewall stateful rule groups accept Suricata-compatible signatures directly, including alert-only and drop actions. An agent can pull a threat feed, normalise it into a Suricata RulesString, and roll it out as a versioned rule group - using DescribeRuleGroup and UpdateRuleGroup to evolve the signature set without rebuilding the firewall.

Example prompt: Call CreateRuleGroup with Type=STATEFUL, Capacity sized for the rule count, and RulesSource.RulesString containing the Suricata signatures, then attach it to a FirewallPolicy

### Forward Firewall Logs Into a SIEM

SOC teams need flow and alert data from the firewall in their SIEM (Splunk, Datadog, Sumo). Network Firewall's UpdateLoggingConfiguration writes selected log types (FLOW or ALERT) to CloudWatch Logs, Kinesis Firehose or S3, from where Firehose can deliver them to third-party analytics. An agent can enable both flow and alert logging in a single update, choose a destination per log type, and validate the configuration via DescribeLoggingConfiguration.

Example prompt: Call UpdateLoggingConfiguration on the firewall with LogDestinationConfigs entries for LogType=ALERT pointing at a Kinesis Firehose ARN and LogType=FLOW pointing at a CloudWatch Log Group

### AI Agent Integration for Network Security Posture

Through Jentic, a security-automation agent can manage AWS Network Firewall as a structured tool - provision, configure rules, attach policies, enable logging - without scripting against boto3. Jentic resolves natural-language intents like 'block outbound traffic to a malicious domain' to the right Network Firewall operation and brokers SigV4 credentials for the agent.

Example prompt: Resolve the intent 'block traffic to a domain list' via Jentic search, load CreateRuleGroup, and execute it with a STATEFUL rule group containing a RulesSourceList for the target FQDNs

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| POST | /#X-Amz-Target=NetworkFirewall_20201112.CreateFirewall | Provision a new Network Firewall |
| POST | /#X-Amz-Target=NetworkFirewall_20201112.CreateFirewallPolicy | Create a firewall policy combining rule groups |
| POST | /#X-Amz-Target=NetworkFirewall_20201112.CreateRuleGroup | Create a stateless or stateful rule group |
| POST | /#X-Amz-Target=NetworkFirewall_20201112.AssociateFirewallPolicy | Attach a firewall policy to a firewall |
| POST | /#X-Amz-Target=NetworkFirewall_20201112.AssociateSubnets | Associate firewall endpoints with VPC subnets |
| POST | /#X-Amz-Target=NetworkFirewall_20201112.UpdateLoggingConfiguration | Enable or update flow and alert logging destinations |

## Key resources

- **Firewalls** — Provision firewall endpoints into VPC subnets and associate route tables
- **Firewall Policies** — Compose stateless and stateful rule groups and default actions
- **Rule Groups** — Define stateless 5-tuple rules, stateful domain lists, and Suricata signatures
- **Logging Configurations** — Forward FLOW and ALERT logs to CloudWatch Logs, Firehose, or S3
- **TLS Inspection Configurations** — Decrypt and inspect TLS traffic terminating in the VPC
- **Tags** — Tag and untag firewalls, policies, and rule groups

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring Network Firewall by hand means implementing AWS SigV4 signing, targeting the regional host such as network-firewall.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com, and polling DescribeFirewall through PROVISIONING states instead of retrying the create call. Through Jentic you install once, import AWS Network Firewall from the API Directory, store the AWS access key once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** Network Firewall passes firewall, policy, and rule-group ARNs in the request body rather than the URL path, so scoping is by operation, not by path prefix. Limit the agent to the operations it needs, such as CreateRuleGroup and UpdateLoggingConfiguration, so ones like DeleteFirewall or DeleteRuleGroup are not included unless you add them.
- **Credential handling:** Your AWS access key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and used to sign each Network Firewall request with SigV4 at execution time. The raw secret never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'block outbound traffic to a domain list' or 'attach a rule group to an AWS firewall', and Jentic returns the matching Network Firewall operation such as CreateRuleGroup with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the AWS reference.

## Related APIs

- **AWS WAF** — WAF protects HTTP/HTTPS application traffic at CloudFront, ALB, and API Gateway
- **Amazon EC2** — EC2 manages the VPCs, subnets, and route tables that Network Firewall endpoints sit in
- **Amazon CloudWatch Logs** — CloudWatch Logs is a common destination for Network Firewall flow and alert logs
- **Amazon Route 53 Resolver** — Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall blocks queries by domain at the DNS layer

## FAQ

### Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for AWS Network Firewall?

AWS does not publish an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call AWS Network Firewall via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.

### What authentication does the AWS Network Firewall API use?

The Network Firewall control plane is signed with AWS Signature Version 4 using IAM access keys, with permissions controlled by the network-firewall:* action set. Through Jentic, those AWS credentials live in your Jentic One instance and are used to sign requests on the agent's behalf.

### Can I deploy Suricata rules with AWS Network Firewall?

Yes. CreateRuleGroup with Type=STATEFUL accepts a RulesSource.RulesString containing Suricata-compatible signatures. The rule group must declare a Capacity sized for the rule count, and rules can use the alert or drop actions. Suricata-style domain-list rules are also supported via RulesSourceList for simpler use cases.

### What are the rate limits for Network Firewall?

Control-plane operations are throttled per-account per-region. Provisioning and rule-group updates take longer than typical AWS calls - DescribeFirewall returns a state of PROVISIONING, READY, or DELETING that should be polled rather than retrying the create call.

### How do I attach a rule group to a firewall through Jentic?

Use the Jentic search query 'attach a rule group to an AWS firewall', load CreateFirewallPolicy or UpdateFirewallPolicy, and execute it with a FirewallPolicy.StatefulRuleGroupReferences array including your rule group ARN. Then call AssociateFirewallPolicy if the policy is not already attached.

### Can Network Firewall inspect encrypted TLS traffic?

Yes, with limitations. CreateTLSInspectionConfiguration sets up an inspection profile that uses an ACM certificate to decrypt and re-encrypt TLS traffic terminating in the VPC. The certificate's private key must be in ACM in the same region, and only specific TLS protocol versions are supported.

### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the AWS Network Firewall API?

Yes. Because you self-host Jentic One, your own rules decide which AWS Network Firewall operations and credentials the agent may use, and it can only call what you allow. Since firewall, policy, and rule-group ARNs are passed in the request body rather than the URL path, scoping is done per operation rather than by path prefix. You can grant the agent just the operations it needs, such as CreateRuleGroup and UpdateLoggingConfiguration, while leaving destructive ones like DeleteFirewall and DeleteRuleGroup out unless you add them.