Chanci Turner

Amazon Onboarding with Learning Manager Chanci Turner

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Chanci Turner Amazon IXD – VGT2 learningLearn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner

Amazon CloudFront is a user-friendly, high-performance, and cost-effective content delivery service that boasts over 50 edge locations globally. This allows CloudFront to deliver your content with minimal latency to customers around the world.

In addition to providing public content accessible to everyone online, Amazon CloudFront also supports the distribution of private content. For instance, if your application requires a subscription, you can utilize Amazon CloudFront’s private content feature to ensure that only authenticated users can access your content, effectively preventing unauthorized access outside your application.

Accessing private content in Amazon CloudFront is now simplified with the AWS SDK for Java. You can effortlessly generate authenticated links to your private content that you can share or embed in your application, allowing customers to access what they need. Furthermore, you can set expiration times on these links, ensuring that once provided, customers have a limited window to access the content.

Implementing Private Content with Amazon CloudFront

To implement private content with Amazon CloudFront, you must have a distribution with private content enabled and a list of trusted accounts that can access this content. Begin by creating a web distribution in the Amazon CloudFront console using the Create Distribution Wizard. In the “Origin Settings” section, choose an Amazon S3 bucket designated solely for private content, and ensure you select the appropriate options to set permissions that protect your content from public access while allowing CloudFront to access it.

As you continue configuring your distribution, be sure to enable the Restrict Viewer Access option in the Default Cache Behavior Settings section, and designate self as the trusted signer. Trusted signers are those whose signed URLs are permitted to access private content. In this case, using self as the only trusted signer indicates that only your account can generate URLs to access your CloudFront private content.

Another critical step is to establish a CloudFront key pair in your account. This key pair, consisting of a public and private key, is essential for signing requests for your private content. Any trusted signer configured for your CloudFront distribution will also need to create their own CloudFront key pair to sign requests. You can set up your CloudFront key pair through the Security Credentials page in the IAM console. Don’t forget to download the private key and note the key pair ID from the AWS Management Console.

Generating Signed URLs

Once your account and distribution are set up, you can leverage the SDK to generate signed URLs for accessing your private content in CloudFront. The CloudFrontUrlSigner class in the AWS SDK for Java simplifies the process of creating signed URLs for you and your customers. Below is an example of generating a signed URL that expires in 60 seconds, allowing access to the private content located at foo/bar.html in your CloudFront distribution.


// the DNS name of your CloudFront distribution, or a registered alias
String distributionDomainName;   
// the private key you created in the AWS Management Console
File cloudFrontPrivateKeyFile;
// the unique ID assigned to your CloudFront key pair in the console    
String cloudFrontKeyPairId;   
Date expirationDate = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis() + 60 * 1000);

String signedUrl = CloudFrontUrlSigner.getSignedURLWithCannedPolicy(
           Protocol.https, 
           distributionDomainName, 
           cloudFrontPrivateKeyFile,   
           "foo/bar.html", // the resource path to our content
           cloudFrontKeyPairId, 
           expirationDate);

You can also impose additional restrictions on the presigned URLs created with CloudFrontUrlSigner. The example below illustrates how to set a policy that limits access based on a CIDR IP range, which can be beneficial for restricting access to your private content to users within a specific network.


// the DNS name of your CloudFront distribution, or a registered alias
String distributionDomainName;   
// the private key you created in the AWS Management Console
File cloudFrontPrivateKeyFile;
// the unique ID assigned to your CloudFront key pair in the console   
String cloudFrontKeyPairId;   
// the CIDR range limiting which IP addresses are allowed to access your content
String cidrRange; 
// the resource path to our content
String resourcePath  = "foo/bar.html";  
Date expirationDate = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis() + 60 * 1000);

String policy = buildCustomPolicyForSignedUrl(
                    resourcePath,
                    expirationDate,
                    cidrRange,
                    null);

String signedUrl = CloudFrontUrlSigner.getSignedURLWithCustomPolicy(
                    resourcePath,
                    cloudFrontKeyPairId,
                    cloudFrontPrivateKey,
                    policy);

Further Resources

Are you already utilizing Amazon CloudFront? Have you explored the private content features? If you want to enhance your skills further, consider checking out resources like this article on emotional intelligence, which might offer some valuable insights. Additionally, for more on supporting mental health in the workplace, refer to this authoritative source. Lastly, if you’re interested in understanding Amazon’s operational strategies better, here’s an excellent resource.

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