All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔔 Amazon Lightsail now offers new Node.js, LAMP, and Ruby on Rails blueprints that enforce IMDSv2 by default and support IPv6-only instances. With a few clicks you can create a Lightsail VPS of your preferred size with the selected stack preinstalled; bundles include an operating system, storage, and a monthly data transfer allowance. The new blueprints are available in all AWS Regions where Lightsail is offered.

🚀 Amazon Bedrock now offers a 1-hour time-to-live (TTL) option for prompt caching on select Anthropic Claude models. This extends cached prompt prefix persistence beyond the previous 5-minute default, improving cost efficiency and responsiveness for long-running agentic workflows and multi-turn conversations. The 1-hour TTL is generally available for Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Haiku 4.5, and Claude Opus 4.5 in commercial AWS Regions and AWS GovCloud (US) where those models are available. The 1-hour cache is billed at a different rate than the standard 5-minute cache.

🛡️ AWS IAM Identity Center now supports native IPv6 via new dual-stack endpoints that accept both IPv4 and IPv6 clients, enabling direct IPv6 access without network address translation. Administrators should update external IdP configurations (ACS and SCIM URLs), adjust firewalls and gateways, and share the dual-stack app URL with users. You can monitor adoption through CloudTrail by inspecting clientProvidedHostHeader to distinguish IPv4-only and dual-stack usage.

🔒 AWS announced successful completion of the PCI PIN audit for AWS CloudHSM. The attestation, conducted by Coalfire, validated CloudHSM on FIPS 140-3 Level 3 hardware with zero findings. The compliance package includes a PCI PIN Attestation of Compliance and a PCI PIN Responsibility Summary to clarify customer obligations. Customers can retrieve reports via AWS Artifact and may consider AWS Payment Cryptography as a managed alternative for PIN operations such as translation.

🛡️ Microsoft Deputy CISO for Government and Trust Tim Langan outlines a proactive approach to protecting government data, emphasizing collaboration across teams and partners. The post advocates defend forward threat hunting, the Cybersecurity Governance Council for cross-functional decision-making, and embedding security through initiatives like the Secure Future Initiative. Key focus areas include secure-by-design development, paved paths for compliance, and accelerating secure solutions for federal and defense scenarios.

✨ BigQuery now integrates Gemini and Vertex AI models directly into SQL, enabling in-place generative AI and embedding workflows. New functions—AI.GENERATE(), AI.GENERATE_TABLE(), AI.EMBED(), and AI.SIMILARITY()—support text and multimodal inputs and return structured outputs via an output_schema for immediate querying. End User Credentials simplify authentication, and Gemini 3.0 Pro/Flash support is available for advanced generative tasks.

🤖 Maia 200 is Microsoft’s new first‑party AI inference accelerator, fabricated on TSMC’s 3nm process and optimized for low‑precision tensor compute. It combines native FP8/FP4 tensor cores with 216GB of HBM3e at 7 TB/s, 272MB on‑chip SRAM and specialized data‑movement engines to raise token throughput and utilization. Microsoft positions Maia 200 as delivering over 10 petaFLOPS (FP4), about 30% better performance‑per‑dollar versus its prior fleet, and higher FP8 performance than competing hyperscaler accelerators. Deployed in US Central with Azure integration and an SDK preview, Maia 200 targets inference for services such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI GPT‑5.2.

🔐 Identity providers like Okta are central to modern SaaS security, and subtle configuration gaps can create serious exposure. This article highlights six fundamental settings—password policies, phishing‑resistant MFA, ThreatInsight, admin session ASN binding, session lifetimes, and behavior rules—that reduce the risk of account takeovers and session hijacking. Complementing these controls with continuous monitoring from Nudge Security helps detect drift and remediate misconfigurations before they’re exploited.

🔒 Amazon Managed Grafana is now available in both AWS GovCloud (US-West) and AWS GovCloud (US-East) Regions, allowing government customers and regulated industries to securely visualize and analyze operational telemetry at scale. The fully managed service, based on open-source Grafana, supports all features in GovCloud except Enterprise plugins. To get started, customers can create workspaces via the AWS Console and consult the Amazon Managed Grafana user guide for region-specific guidance.

🔁 AWS now offers a monthly flat-rate billing option for Amazon WorkSpaces Core managed instances in addition to existing hourly pay-as-you-go pricing. Monthly billing is optimized for predictable, always-on VDI desktops while hourly remains better for variable usage, and customers can mix both models within a single deployment. VDI partners such as Citrix, Workspot, Dizzion, and Leostream can use the WorkSpaces API to enable the monthly option when instances are created; hourly utility charges are also being consolidated on WorkSpaces bills without changing effective on-demand rates.

🚀 Gemini for Government packages Google’s Gemini models, secure commercial cloud services, and agentic AI tools into a FedRAMP High-authorized platform for the public sector. It is positioned to accelerate adoption of AI agents across defense, health, transportation, and research by offering enterprise-grade compliance and scalability. Early adopters include the Department of War’s GenAI.mil rollout, the FDA, and the Department of Transportation, and Google is offering webinars and downloadable agent toolkits to help agencies start building and deploying solutions today.

🔒 AWS Transfer Family now enables access to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems over SFTP, FTPS, and FTP by routing transfers through S3 Access Points. This complements native NFS/SMB access so you can preserve existing internal workflows while offering industry-standard secure transfer protocols to partners and users. Access control is enforced using IAM policies and S3 Access Point configurations, and the capability is available in select AWS Regions.

🔔Okta Threat Intelligence has warned that cybercriminals are combining vishing calls with adaptable phishing sites to social-engineer victims and bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). Attackers perform reconnaissance, spoof internal IT support numbers during calls and direct users to customized phishing pages that update in real time. Stolen credentials are relayed to attackers who then generate fake MFA prompts to obtain approvals and gain account access.

⚠️ 1Password has added a browser pop-up that warns users when a visited URL appears to be a phishing or typosquatted site, aiming to prevent manual credential entry on deceptive pages. The feature will be enabled automatically for individual and family plans, while enterprise admins can turn it on via Authentication Policies in the admin console. 1Password cites rising AI-assisted phishing and internal survey data on click-through and credential reuse as motivating factors.

🔔 1Password has added an in-product pop-up that warns users when a visited URL looks like a potential phishing or typosquatted site, aiming to prevent manual credential entry. The feature is enabled by default for individual and family plan users; admins can activate it for employees via Authentication Policies. 1Password says the alerts are intended to make users pause and inspect URLs more closely, addressing cases where autofill protections alone are insufficient.

🎉 The Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) marks its ninth anniversary, celebrating a sustained industry shift from guarded threat data to coordinated, high-fidelity intelligence sharing. Founded in 2014 by major vendors, the CTA established governance, legal frameworks and technical platforms to enable secure exchange. The piece highlights how leadership, deliberate design and cross-company commitment transformed a bold experiment into lasting, global cybersecurity infrastructure and urges continued engagement to meet evolving threats.

🔒 AWS announced that AWS Payment Cryptography successfully completed the PCI PIN audit and received an Attestation of Compliance with zero findings. The updated compliance package includes the PCI PIN AOC and a PCI PIN Responsibility Summary that clarifies shared responsibilities for developing and operating secure PIN-handling environments. The attestation confirms use of PCI PTS HSM-certified, fully managed hardware and PCI PIN-compliant key management; reports validated by the QSA Coalfire are available through AWS Artifact.

🔒 Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced completion of the 2025 C5 Type 2 attestation cycle covering 183 services, reaffirming its alignment with the German BSI-backed C5 security criteria. Independent auditors assessed AWS for the period from October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025, and the report documents both basic and additional C5 criteria. AWS added five services to the C5 scope and lists nine Europe and Asia Pacific regions in scope. Customers can retrieve the full attestation via AWS Artifact.

🔒 AWS has expanded GSMA Security Accreditation Scheme for Subscription Management (GSMA SAS-SM) certification to four additional Regions — US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) — and recertified US East (Ohio) and Europe (Paris). All Region certifications cover Data Centre Operations and Management (DCOM) and were validated by GSMA-selected independent auditors, with compliance valid through October 2026. The certification helps ISVs and startups inherit controls to build compliant eSIM and subscription management services, enabling faster time to market and geo-redundant deployments.

🌐 Amazon Route 53 Domains now supports registration and management of ten new top-level domains, including .ai, .shop, .bot and others. Customers can register these TLDs via the Route 53 console, AWS CLI, or SDKs and use integrated DNS management and automatic renewal to administer domains alongside existing hosted zones. The expansion gives businesses and individuals more industry- and region-specific naming options directly within AWS. See the Route 53 product and pricing pages for additional details and costs.