All 7 AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) questions
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What is AWS Certificate Manager and why is it important for securing web applications? How does ACM handle automatic certificate renewal, and what is required to keep this working smoothly? Can ACM certificates be used with resources outside of AWS managed services, such as on an EC2 instance running your own web server? How does using a certificate with a CloudFront distribution differ in terms of region requirements compared to other services? What is AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority, and when would an organization use it instead of public certificates? How should an organization design its certificate management strategy across multiple AWS accounts and regions?
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How does domain validation work when requesting a certificate through ACM?

Beginner

Answer

ACM requires you to prove that you actually own or control the domain name before it will issue a certificate, which can be done through DNS validation, where you add a specific CNAME record to your domain's DNS configuration, or through email validation, where ACM sends a verification email to addresses associated with the domain, with DNS validation being the preferred method since it also enables automatic certificate renewal.
aws acm describe-certificate --certificate-arn arn:aws:acm:us-east-1:123456789012:certificate/abc123
Real-world example A company uses DNS validation when requesting its ACM certificate through Route 53, since Route 53 can automatically add the required validation CNAME record, streamlining the entire certificate issuance process.

Common follow-ups: Why is DNS validation generally preferred over email validation?;What happens if the validation record is removed after the certificate is issued?

Amazon Route 53 & DNS Management;IAM
All 7 AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) questions