AWS WAF & Shield w/Lightsail Instance? Possible and How?

Hi rainbowinthedark,

Thank you for posting your question here.

I understand that you want to set up a firewall/malware security solution other than relying on WordPress plugins, you want use something that's built-in into AWS already.

I would suggest that you use the AWS Web Application Firewall. AWS WAF is tightly integrated with the Application Load Balancer (ALB), a service that you would commonly use to deliver content for your websites and applications. AWS WAF will not work for you without ALB. LightSail supports using an ALB. If you were to use it to front your LightSail instance then you could use AWS WAF. See https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/en_us/articles/using-lightsail-with-other-aws-services

This documentation: https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/guidelines-implementing-aws-waf.pdf shows you clear and important guidelines of implementing AWS WAF.

Hopefully this helps. Should you have any further queries or concern, please feel free to reach out.

Thanks,
Ayabulela

Hi,

Thank you for getting back to me.

I tried to create an LB in Lightsail's panel but it doesn't show up in AWS?

Or do I need to create an ALB in AWS? Could you please clarify?

Hi there,

Yes, you need to create an ALB in AWS

1. You have to create a default VPC in AWS, if you don't have one, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/default-vpc.html#create-default-vpc . Since AWS Regions are isolated from one another, a VPC is also isolated in the region where you created it. You'll need to enable VPC peering in each region where you have Lightsail resources.

2. You need to enable VPC peering in LightSail. See https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/en_us/articles/lightsail-how-to-set-up-vpc-peering-with-aws-resources

3. And then on your ALB, add target group resource with "Other private IP address" pointing to "private IP" of your LightSail. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/create-target-group.html.

Hopefully this helps.

Thanks
Ayabulela

Did you get this working? I need the same thing