Big news from AWS! If you've ever set up a Cloud Front distribution and thought
“Why do I have to manually request and link a TLS certificate?”
✅ What’s New?
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) now supports automated public TLS certificate provisioning directly when you're creating a Cloud Front distribution.
That means:
- No manual certificate request
- No DNS validation headaches
- No extra steps to associate the certificate
📦 All you do is check a box during Cloud Front setup — and ACM takes care of the rest. 🧙♂️
🔁 It Also Auto-Renews
Even better: As long as the certificate is in use and traffic is being routed to Cloud Front for the domain, ACM will automatically renew it. 🎉
This removes one of the most error-prone tasks in production environments — expired TLS certs.
🧱 What It Replaces
Before this update:
- You manually requested a certificate in ACM
- Validated your domain (via DNS or email)
- Waited for it to issue
- Manually attached it to your Cloud Front distribution
That option still exists (if you need more control), but for most use cases, the new "one-click cert" approach is simpler, faster, and safer.
🛠️ Why This Matters
💡 Faster setup: You can go from domain to deployed in minutes
🔐 Stronger security: Auto-renewal means no more expired cert risks
🧹 Cleaner workflows: Less ops overhead, fewer manual steps
🧰 Integrated: TLS management now lives right inside your Cloud Front setup💬 Final Thoughts
This is a fantastic move toward simplifying security best practices for developers and platform teams using Cloud Front. Whether you're launching one site or thousands, automated TLS provisioning is one less thing to worry about.
