All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🚀 Amazon Web Services announced general availability of Amazon EC2 I8g Storage Optimized instances in Asia Pacific (Seoul) and South America (São Paulo). These instances use third-generation AWS Nitro SSDs to deliver up to 65% better real-time storage performance per TB, with significantly lower storage I/O latency and variability. I8g instances target I/O-intensive, low-latency workloads with up to 45 TB local NVMe storage, up to 100 Gbps networking, and 60 Gbps dedicated EBS bandwidth across multiple sizes including a metal option.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has expanded availability of EC2 G6f instances powered by NVIDIA L4 GPUs to Europe (Spain) and Asia Pacific (Seoul), improving access for graphics and visualization workloads. G6f instances support GPU partitions as small as one-eighth of a GPU with 3 GB of GPU memory, enabling finer-grained right-sizing and cost savings compared to single‑GPU options. Instances are offered in multiple sizes paired with third‑generation AMD EPYC processors, and are purchasable as On‑Demand, Spot, or via Savings Plans; customers should use NVIDIA GRID driver 18.4 or later to launch these instances.

🛡️ CrowdStrike argues legacy vulnerability management cannot keep pace with AI-accelerated adversaries. Their Falcon Exposure Management platform leverages a single lightweight sensor to deliver continuous, native visibility across endpoints, cloud, and network assets. It pairs adversary-aware risk prioritization with agentic automation and Charlotte Agentic SOAR to reduce manual triage and remediate high-risk exposures quickly. The emphasis is on speeding effective action, cutting tool sprawl, and focusing teams on the small subset of issues that drive most breach risk.

🛡️ Google has asked a US court to dismantle infrastructure used by the Lighthouse phishing‑as‑a‑service operation after identifying at least 107 sign‑in templates that mimic Google branding. The service is marketed to attackers who send smishing links and host fraudulent sign‑in pages to harvest credentials. Google also urged Congress to consider GUARD, Foreign Robocall Elimination and SCAM bills to bolster enforcement and funding. The company declined additional comment.

🛡️ Google has filed a lawsuit seeking to dismantle Lighthouse, a China-linked phishing-as-a-service platform accused of powering global SMS phishing ("smishing") campaigns that impersonate USPS and E-ZPass. Google says Lighthouse has impacted more than 1 million victims across 120 countries and that phishing templates even display Google's branding to trick users. The company is pursuing federal claims including RICO, the Lanham Act, and the CFAA while expanding AI and product protections.

🔐 Amazon Web Services added JWT Verification to the Application Load Balancer (ALB), enabling ALB to validate token signatures, expirations, and claims in request headers. The capability supports OAuth 2.0 flows including Client Credentials, letting teams offload M2M/S2S token validation to the ALB without changing application code. The feature is available in all ALB-supported AWS Regions.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has added Graviton3-based M7g and R7g ElastiCache node families to AWS GovCloud (US-East and US-West). These Graviton3 nodes deliver improved price‑performance versus Graviton2 — for example, running ElastiCache for Redis OSS on an R7g.4xlarge can yield up to 28% higher throughput, up to 21% improved P99 latency, and up to 25% greater networking bandwidth. To adopt, create a new cluster or upgrade via the AWS Management Console; consult pricing and the node-type documentation for regional availability and details.

🔒 AWS announced an independent affirmation of the Amazon EKS zero operator access design, validated by cybersecurity firm NCC Group. The review found no architectural gaps and confirmed that AWS personnel lack technical means to access or manipulate customer content in managed Kubernetes control planes or etcd backups. AWS highlights Nitro-based confidential compute, tightly scoped administrative APIs with multi-party change approval, mandatory logging and auditing, and envelope encryption for etcd as core protections. Customers retain visibility via cluster audit logs and remain responsible for securing worker node configurations outside managed modes.

🔐 Microsoft has added native Windows 11 support for third-party passkey managers, beginning with 1Password and Bitwarden. Introduced in the November 2025 security update, the platform-level passkey API lets Windows generate a cryptographic key pair while storing the private key in the chosen manager, and uses Windows Hello (PIN or biometric) to verify logins. Microsoft also integrated its Microsoft Password Manager from Edge into Windows so users can pick their preferred manager. The change aims to improve portability, phishing resistance, and ease of passwordless authentication across devices.

🧪 AWS Fault Injection Service (FIS) introduces two new pre-built experiment scenarios to simulate partial, cross- and single-AZ disruptions. The AZ: Application Slowdown scenario simulates increased latency and degraded performance within a single Availability Zone to validate observability, alarms, and AZ evacuation playbooks. The Cross-AZ: Traffic Slowdown scenario simulates degraded traffic between AZs and lets you target subsets of traffic for realistic gray-failure testing. These scenarios are available in all Regions where AWS FIS is offered, including AWS GovCloud (US).

🚀 Microsoft announced the new Fairwater Azure AI datacenter in Atlanta, Georgia, expanding its planet-scale AI superfactory. The purpose-built facility integrates massive NVIDIA Blackwell GPU clusters on a single flat network and uses rack-level direct liquid cooling plus a two-story layout to maximize compute density and reduce latency. It also connects via a dedicated AI WAN to enable cross-site fungibility and dynamic workload allocation.

🔍 BigQuery now supports MATCH_RECOGNIZE, a SQL clause for identifying ordered patterns across rows and time-series data. It lets analysts express complex sequence logic—using PARTITION BY, ORDER BY, PATTERN, DEFINE and MEASURES—inside a single query without heavy joins or external processing. The feature targets use cases like funnels, fraud detection, log sequencing, and financial pattern detection, and is immediately available to all BigQuery users.

🔒 Cameyo by Google is a cloud-native Virtual App Delivery solution that streams legacy Windows and Linux applications into the browser or publishes them as Progressive Web Apps, avoiding the overhead of full VDI. Paired with Chrome Enterprise Premium, Cameyo brings legacy client apps under a single secure browsing context with advanced DLP and threat protection. IT teams benefit from faster deployments, reduced VPN and infrastructure complexity, and a clear migration path to ChromeOS while preserving critical Windows workloads.

🚀 Google outlines its plan to embed Generative AI across enterprise platforms and endpoints, integrating Gemini into Chrome Enterprise, Android, Pixel phones and Chromebook Plus devices. The post highlights the general availability of Cameyo by Google to virtualize legacy and modern apps in the cloud and the launch of Gemini in Chrome with enterprise-grade controls. It also previews Android XR and Pixel features powered by Gemini Nano, while expanding data loss prevention and a one-click SecOps integration to help IT secure AI-driven workflows.

🤖 BigQuery is introducing managed AI functions in public preview — AI.IF, AI.CLASSIFY, and AI.SCORE — that let analysts apply generative AI directly inside SQL queries. These functions enable semantic filtering and joins, label-based classification of text and images, and natural-language ranking, while BigQuery applies prompt, query-plan, and endpoint optimizations to reduce LLM calls and control cost. They complement existing Gemini inference functions and remove much of the need for complex prompt tuning or separate model selection, making AI-driven analytics more accessible within familiar SQL workflows.

🛡️ The Emerging Threats Center in Google Security Operations uses the Gemini detection‑engineering agent to turn frontline intelligence from Mandiant, VirusTotal, and Google into actionable detections. It generates high‑fidelity synthetic events, evaluates existing rule coverage, and drafts candidate detection rules for analyst review. The capability surfaces campaign‑based IOC and detection matches across 12 months of telemetry to help teams rapidly determine exposure and validate their defensive posture.

🏆 Fortinet has been named a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Security Service Edge (SSE) for the third consecutive year and is the only cybersecurity vendor to receive this recognition in the SSE market. Based on 195 verified end-user reviews as of August 2025, Fortinet achieved a 4.9/5 overall rating, 90% five-star reviews and 100% willingness to recommend. FortiSASE is highlighted for delivering unified, AI-powered cloud security backed by 170+ POPs, a single unified agent and deployment flexibility that aims to reduce operational overhead. Fortinet frames the recognition as validation of customer trust and its focus on simplifying secure hybrid work.

🔧 Amazon Connect Cases now supports conditional field visibility and dependent field options to streamline case layouts and reduce data-entry errors. Administrators can show fields only when relevant (for example, display a Return Reason field for return cases) and restrict choice lists based on other selections (e.g., limit Issue Type to hardware options when Issue Category is Hardware). The feature is available in multiple AWS regions.

🔍 Amazon CloudWatch Logs now ingests Network Load Balancer (NLB) access logs as vended logs, enabling direct analysis within CloudWatch. You can run CloudWatch Logs Insights queries, create metric filters, and use Live Tail for real‑time traffic review to accelerate troubleshooting. NLB access logs are configurable from the NLB integrations tab, AWS CLI, or SDKs, and can also be delivered to Amazon Data Firehose or S3 with optional Apache Parquet conversion. Delivery to CloudWatch and Firehose is billed as vended logs; S3 delivery is free while Parquet conversion carries a per‑GB charge.

🔔 AWS announced customizable communication preferences for Security Incident Response, letting teams select notification types such as case changes, membership updates, and organizational announcements. The update replaces a one-size-fits-all model so individuals receive only relevant updates and reduces notification noise. Settings include smart defaults and can be adjusted as roles evolve. The feature is available to all Security Incident Response customers at no additional cost via the console.