Cloudflare Managed Rules Dashboard Exception Creation Failed April 2

What happened

Cloudflare experienced a service incident on April 2 where users could not create Managed Rules exceptions through the Cloudflare Dashboard. The issue began around 12:42 UTC when Cloudflare started investigating reports of problems with the exception creation functionality. The problem was identified by 14:02 UTC and a fix was implemented shortly after. The incident was fully resolved by 14:17 UTC, lasting approximately 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Business impact

Teams managing web application firewalls through Cloudflare could not create security rule exceptions during the outage, potentially blocking legitimate traffic or preventing urgent security configuration changes. Enterprise websites relying on real-time security adjustments faced operational constr

Background

Managed Rules in Cloudflare allow organizations to customize web application firewall behavior by creating exceptions for specific traffic patterns. This functionality is essential for enterprise websites that need to balance security with user experience, particularly during deployments or when integrating third-party services that might trigger false positives.

What this means for your team

Document alternative methods for managing security rules during vendor outages, including API-based rule management and CLI tools. Maintain staging environments that mirror production security configurations to test rule changes before implementation. Establish escalation procedures with Cloudflare

What to watch

Monitor Cloudflare's promised root cause analysis for this incident. Check if similar dashboard functionality issues affect other Cloudflare services that your organization depends on for critical operations.