For AI agents: A markdown version of this page is available at https://docs.datadoghq.com/security/code_security/iac_security/iac_rules/cloudformation-aws-route53-record-undefined.md.
A documentation index is available at /llms.txt.
A Route 53 hosted zone without any DNS record sets can lead to service outages from missing DNS entries. It also increases the risk of unmanaged or manual record additions that bypass infrastructure-as-code controls.
In CloudFormation, every AWS::Route53::HostedZone should be accompanied by one or more AWS::Route53::RecordSet resources. Record sets should reference the hosted zone via HostedZoneId or HostedZoneName, and define Name and Type (plus appropriate record data such as TTL and ResourceRecords. Templates that create an AWS::Route53::HostedZone but contain no AWS::Route53::RecordSet resources in the same template will be flagged.