All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Manage SageMaker HyperPod Clusters with AI MCP Server

🔧 The Amazon SageMaker AI MCP Server now provides tools to set up and manage HyperPod clusters, allowing AI coding assistants to provision and operate clusters for distributed training, fine‑tuning, and deployment. It automates prerequisites and orchestrates clusters via Amazon EKS or Slurm with CloudFormation templates that optimize networking, storage, and compute. The server also delivers lifecycle operations — scaling, patching, diagnostics — so administrators and data scientists can manage large-scale AI/ML clusters without deep infrastructure expertise.

AWS Network Firewall Proxy Now Available in Preview

🔒 AWS has launched Network Firewall Proxy in public preview, providing centralized controls to block data exfiltration and malware injection across application traffic. In explicit proxy mode you can set up filters in just a few clicks to control outbound requests and the responses your applications receive, protect against domain or SNI spoofing, and restrict access to trusted domains or IPs. The service supports TLS inspection and granular HTTP header filtering, and emits detailed logs to Amazon S3 and AWS CloudWatch. Preview access is free in US East (Ohio).

AWS Issues Behavioral Guidelines for Network Scanning

🔍 AWS published behavioral guidelines for network scanning to help legitimate scanners distinguish themselves from malicious actors when probing AWS IP space. The guidance defines four pillars—observational, identifiable, cooperative, and confidential—and gives practical examples (non‑mutating checks, reverse DNS, meaningful user‑agents, opt‑out mechanisms). Conforming scanners should limit impact, secure collected data, and respect opt‑out requests to reduce abuse reports and improve internet security.

Tor adopts Counter Galois Onion (CGO) for relay encryption

🔐 Tor has replaced its legacy tor1 relay encryption with a new design called Counter Galois Onion (CGO) to strengthen circuit traffic confidentiality and integrity. CGO is built on a Rugged Pseudorandom Permutation (RPRP) construction named UIV+ and provides wide-block encryption, tag chaining, per-cell key updates for immediate forward secrecy, and a 16-byte authenticator that removes SHA-1. The change is currently experimental in the C Tor implementation and the Rust client Arti, will be deployed transparently to Tor Browser users, and aims to block tagging and other malleability attacks with only modest bandwidth cost.

Amazon Aurora adds PostgreSQL minor versions and DDM

🔒 Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition now supports minor PostgreSQL releases 17.6, 16.10, 15.14, 14.19, and 13.22. The update introduces Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) for versions 16.10 and 17.6, masking column values at query time via role-based policies without changing stored data. It also adds a shared plan cache and delivers improved performance, faster RTO, and better Global Database switchover behavior. These versions are available in all commercial AWS Regions and AWS GovCloud (US); you can create new clusters or upgrade existing databases through the RDS console.

Exchange Online outage prevents classic Outlook access

⚠️ Microsoft is investigating an Exchange Online outage (incident EX1189820) preventing customers from accessing mailboxes via the classic Outlook desktop client, with reports of server connection and login failures. The company says impact is specific to users in Asia Pacific and North America and has classified the event as an incident in the admin center. As a workaround, affected users are advised to use Outlook on the Web while Microsoft analyzes the issue.

AWS Glue: Zero-ETL Replication for Self-Managed Databases

🔁AWS Glue now supports zero-ETL for self-managed database sources, enabling no-code replication from Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL hosted on-premises or on EC2 to Amazon Redshift. The feature auto-creates ongoing integrations to simplify setup, reduce operational overhead, and eliminate much of the engineering work previously required to build ingestion pipelines. It is available in multiple AWS Regions and aims to save teams weeks of engineering effort.

AWS Lambda Adds Node.js 24 Runtime and Container Base

🆕 AWS Lambda now supports creating serverless applications with Node.js 24, available as both a managed runtime and a container base image. AWS will automatically apply updates to the managed runtime and base image as they become available, and the runtime is offered in all Regions including GovCloud (US) and China. The release emphasizes modern async/await handlers and removes callback-based handlers; Lambda@Edge and Powertools for AWS Lambda (TypeScript) are also supported, and standard AWS deployment tools (Console, CLI, SAM, CDK, CloudFormation) can be used to deploy Node.js 24 functions.

Microsoft adds Teams call handler to speed Windows client

⚡Microsoft will introduce a new Teams call handler, ms-teams_modulehost.exe, that runs as a child process to manage the calling stack separately from the main ms-teams.exe application, improving startup times and in-meeting performance. The change is transparent to end users and requires no retraining. Administrators should allowlist the new process in security and endpoint protection systems and notify helpdesk staff to avoid false positives during the rollout.

Year-End Cybersecurity Spend: Focus on Measurable Risk

🔒 As year-end budgets close, organizations should prioritize security purchases that reduce real business risk and produce measurable outcomes. Skip vendor wish lists; focus on strengthening identity controls — expanding MFA, tightening privileged access, and auditing Active Directory — and on short, outcome-based engagements such as attack-surface reviews, tabletop exercises, and purple-team testing. Consolidate redundant tools, pre-buy continuity capacity, and document KPIs to justify future funding.

How CloudGuard WAF Reduces Risk and Total Cost of Ownership

🔒 Check Point's CloudGuard WAF combines high prevention accuracy with reduced operational overhead to lower risk and total cost of ownership. In the WAF Comparison Project 2024–25 (1,040,242 legitimate requests across 692 sites, 13 vendors) it delivered ~99.4% detection and ~0.8% false positives. That accuracy, paired with less manual tuning and faster false-positive triage, cuts hidden expenses and breach exposure while protecting apps and APIs.

AWS Service Quotas: Automatic Quota Management Launch

🚀 AWS announced general availability of automatic quota management in Service Quotas. The feature sends configurable notifications (email, SMS, Slack) via the Service Quotas console or API when usage approaches allocated limits and can automatically and safely adjust service quota values in response to observed consumption. This reduces operational overhead from tracking and requesting quota increases across accounts and Regions and helps prevent unexpected interruptions. The capability is available at no additional cost in all AWS commercial regions.

AWS Glue Data Quality Adds Preprocessing Queries Support

🛠️ AWS announces general availability of AWS Glue Data Quality preprocessing queries, enabling transformations before running data quality checks through the Glue Data Catalog APIs. The feature lets you create derived columns, filter datasets, perform calculations, and validate column relationships as part of the quality evaluation. This capability removes separate preprocessing steps, streamlines workflows, and tailors recommendations and rules to specific data subsets across commercial AWS Regions.

AWS Glue Data Quality Adds Rule Labeling for Reporting

🔖 AWS has made AWS Glue Data Quality rule labeling generally available, allowing teams to attach custom key-value labels to data quality rules for better organization and targeted reporting. Labels can represent business context, team ownership, compliance tags, or priority and can be authored in DQDL. Queryable in rule outcomes, row-level results, and APIs, labels enable focused reports and streamlined remediation workflows across all commercial AWS Regions where the service is available.

SageMaker AI Inference Adds Bidirectional Streaming

🎙️ Amazon SageMaker AI Inference now supports bidirectional streaming, enabling real-time speech-to-text transcription that returns partial transcripts while audio is still being captured. Using the new Bidirectional Stream API, clients open an HTTP/2 connection to the SageMaker AI runtime, which automatically creates a WebSocket to your model container so audio frames and interim transcripts flow continuously. Any container that implements a WebSocket handler per the SageMaker AI contract works out of the box, allowing real-time models such as Deepgram to run without modification. The feature eliminates weeks or months of custom streaming infrastructure work so teams can focus on model accuracy, latency tuning, and agent behavior.

Amazon Quick Suite: Scheduling for Quick Flows Automation

🕒 Amazon Quick Flows now supports scheduled execution, allowing teams to automate repetitive workflows at specified times or custom intervals. You can configure flows to run daily, weekly, monthly, or on custom schedules and schedule any flow you can access—whether you created it or it was shared with you. Scheduling is set via the Quick Flows scheduling icon and is available now in IAD, PDX, and DUB. There are no additional charges beyond standard Quick Flows usage, and common use cases include recurring report generation, summarizing open items in external services, and producing daily meeting briefings.

OpenSearch Service Introduces Agentic Search for NLP Queries

🔎 Amazon Web Services has introduced Agentic Search for OpenSearch Service, an agent-driven layer that interprets natural-language intent, orchestrates search tools, and generates OpenSearch DSL queries while providing transparent summaries of its decision process. The built-in QueryPlanningTool uses LLMs to plan and emit DSL, removing the need for manual query syntax. Two agent types are available: conversational agents with memory and flow agents optimized for throughput. Administrators can configure agents via APIs or OpenSearch Dashboards, and Agentic Search is supported on OpenSearch Service version 3.3+ across AWS Commercial and GovCloud regions.

Amazon SageMaker Adds EAGLE for Faster Inference Throughput

⚡ Amazon SageMaker AI now supports EAGLE (Extrapolation Algorithm for Greater Language-model Efficiency) speculative decoding to boost large language model inference throughput by up to 2.5x. The capability enables models to predict and validate multiple tokens in parallel rather than one at a time, preserving output quality while reducing latency. SageMaker automatically selects between EAGLE 2 and EAGLE 3 depending on model architecture and provides built‑in optimization jobs using curated or customer datasets. Optimized models can be deployed through existing SageMaker inference workflows without infrastructure changes, and the feature is available in select AWS Regions.

Cloudflare Hosts Black Forest Lab FLUX.2 on Workers AI

🖼️ Cloudflare now hosts Black Forest Lab's FLUX.2 image model on the Workers AI inference platform. The licensed dev release builds on the popular FLUX.1 lineage with stronger physical-world grounding, improved fidelity for faces, hands and small objects, and advanced multi-reference editing to preserve character and product consistency. Workers AI exposes FLUX.2 via multipart form-data (up to four 512×512 inputs) and returns images up to 4 megapixels, while supporting JSON prompting, hex color controls, multilingual prompts, and a server-side binding for integration into production pipelines.

AWS IoT Core: Retrieve Thing Registry Data via Rules

🔧 AWS IoT Core now supports dynamic retrieval of thing registry data directly within IoT rules using the new get_registry_data() inline rule function. You can access device attributes, device type, and group membership to filter, enrich, and route messages — for example, routing lifecycle events or enriching gateway messages with sensor thresholds. The feature is available in all AWS regions where AWS IoT Core is present and can be used immediately via the IoT developer guide and API.