Learn more about the technical architecture and benefits of EC2 to S3 + CloudFront OAC migration.
Keeping S3 private prevents anonymous users from bypassing CloudFront CDN caching, security rules, and HTTPS policies. Direct anonymous access is blocked using S3 Block Public Access, ensuring CloudFront is the sole entry point.
OAC is AWS's modern authentication mechanism for CloudFront origins. It uses AWS SigV4 request signing to authenticate CloudFront requests to private S3 REST endpoints, replacing older Origin Access Identity (OAI) patterns.
Yes! AWS CloudFront automatically generates a default HTTPS domain for every distribution (e.g., https://dxxxxxxxxxxxxx.cloudfront.net). You can fully test S3 privacy, OAC signing, edge caching, and static navigation using this default domain without configuring Route 53 or ACM certificates.
No. CloudFront automatically provides a built-in wildcard SSL/TLS certificate for all *.cloudfront.net domains. ACM certificates are only required when attaching custom domains (e.g., www.example.com).