All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔔 AWS has expanded IAM Identity Center to 37 AWS Regions with official availability in Asia Pacific (Taipei). The service is the recommended way to manage workforce access, offering single sign-on, centralized multi-account access, and integration with existing identity sources. It powers personalized experiences in AWS applications such as Amazon Q and supports user-aware data access controls for services like Amazon Redshift. IAM Identity Center is available at no additional cost in supported regions.

🔁 Amazon OpenSearch Service introduces a multi-tier storage option using OpenSearch Optimized (OI2) instances that combine local instance storage with Amazon S3 to enhance durability and performance. The architecture provides a hot tier for frequently accessed data and a writeable warm tier on OI2 (sizes large–8xlarge) that supports writes and automated age-based rotation via Index State Management. Warm capacity is addressable up to five times the local cache, and standard Managed Storage charges apply.

🚀 Amazon EC2 C8i and C8i-flex instances are now available in the Asia Pacific (Singapore) region, powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors built exclusively for AWS. These instances provide up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth compared with previous Intel-based EC2 generations, and up to 20% higher performance versus C7i instances. AWS highlights workload-specific improvements — up to 60% faster for NGINX, 40% for deep learning recommendation models, and 35% for Memcached — and positions C8i-flex for many compute-intensive, partially utilized workloads while C8i targets memory-intensive, sustained-CPU use with sizes up to a new 96xlarge and two bare-metal variants. Instances can be purchased On-Demand, via Savings Plans, or Spot.

🔽 AWS reduced AWS Payment Cryptography API request prices by up to 63% and introduced a fourth pricing tier to better accommodate high-volume workloads. The update also moves key billing from a flat-rate model to tiered key pricing and unifies pricing across all Regions. Changes are effective December 15, 2025 and are applied automatically to all customers. The managed service supports PCI-aligned cryptographic operations, helping organizations reduce reliance on dedicated payment HSMs and scale key management and payment processing more cost-effectively.

☁️ Cloud access security brokers (CASBs) act as gatekeepers between enterprise endpoints and cloud services, offering visibility into user activity, enforcement of access policies, and protection of sensitive data across SaaS, IaaS, and cloud-native apps. Deployments may be forward or reverse proxy, or API-driven, and vendors increasingly fold in DLP, SWG, CSPM, and UEBA capabilities. Key selection factors include supported deployment modes, agent strategy, application/API coverage, and alignment with an SSE or SASE roadmap.

🛡️ CrowdStrike Endpoint Security consolidates prevention, detection, and response into a single, AI-native sensor delivered via the cloud-native Falcon platform. Forrester Consulting's commissioned Total Economic Impact™ study found a 273% ROI over three years and payback in under six months for a modeled global organization. The analysis cites an 80% reduction in endpoint breach risk, a 95% cut in technology management labor, and over 30,500 hours saved across security and technical teams. Customers reported faster investigations, reduced alert noise, and simplified operations that enabled faster integration of new sites and acquisitions.

🔧 AWS IoT Device Management commands now support dynamic payloads and parameter validation, allowing developers to create reusable command templates with placeholders that are populated at execution time. Parameter validation rules verify values before execution to reduce errors and enforce expected formats or ranges. This makes it easier to send similar commands with variable settings—such as different thermostat temperatures—while streamlining command management across device fleets.

🔔 Microsoft announced a broad set of Azure updates at Ignite 2025 designed to help partners accelerate AI-first transformation and modernization. Key highlights include Azure Copilot (private preview) for ARM-driven agent automation, public previews of Foundry Control Plane, Foundry IQ and Fabric IQ, and the Microsoft Agent Factory program with streamlined P3 procurement. These capabilities emphasize governance, secure agent management, unified knowledge retrieval, and data-driven intelligence to reduce operational overhead and speed partner-led deployments.

🔔 Amazon Connect real-time metric alerts now report the specific agents, queues, contact flows, or routing profiles that exceeded thresholds, eliminating the need for manual investigation. For example, alerts on elevated queue wait times will include the exact queues affected so managers can reassign staff promptly. These enriched notifications can be delivered via email, Tasks, and Amazon EventBridge, and the capability is available in all regions where Amazon Connect is offered. The change is designed to accelerate operational response and improve customer experience.

🔌 AWS opened a new AWS Direct Connect location at the CMC Tower in Hanoi, Vietnam, enabling private, dedicated network access to all public AWS Regions (except China), AWS GovCloud Regions, and AWS Local Zones. The site offers dedicated 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, and 100 Gbps connections, with MACsec encryption available for 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps links. This is the first Direct Connect location in Vietnam and is designed to deliver a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections. Organizations can use this location to establish private, physical connections between AWS and their data centers, offices, or colocation environments.

🔒 Mandiant uses the ThreatSpace cyber range to recreate realistic corporate networks and adversary TTPs without risking production assets. The disposable, stateless environment—backed by Google Threat Intelligence Group and frontline Mandiant insights—lets teams miss indicators, exercise playbooks, and stress-test collaboration under crisis conditions. Paired with unscripted red team assessments, these services reveal operational gaps and drive rapid remediation.

🚨 Amazon detected a campaign on Nov 2, 2025 that used compromised IAM credentials to rapidly deploy cryptocurrency miners across ECS Fargate and EC2, with miners running within ten minutes of initial access. The adversary used DryRun-based discovery to validate permissions, created service-linked roles and dozens of ECS clusters, and registered a malicious DockerHub image to launch mining with the RandomVIREL algorithm. Attackers also set disableApiTermination=True on EC2 instances to hinder remediation; Amazon recommends enforcing MFA, least privilege, temporary credentials, container scanning, CloudTrail logging and enabling GuardDuty.

🔗 AWS Security Incident Response now integrates with Slack, enabling bidirectional case creation and automatic data replication so teams can create and update cases from either the Security Incident Response console or Slack. Each case is mapped to a dedicated Slack channel with comments and attachments syncing instantly, and responders are added automatically to accelerate engagement. The open-source solution on GitHub leverages EventBridge and a modular architecture and includes guidance for using AI assistants such as Amazon Q Developer or Kiro to extend integration targets beyond Slack.

🚀Amazon announced that SageMaker AI is now available in the Asia Pacific (New Zealand) AWS Region. Starting today, developers and data scientists in New Zealand can build, train, and deploy machine learning models locally using the fully managed SageMaker AI platform. The service removes much of the operational overhead across the ML lifecycle, helping teams move from experimentation to production more quickly and consistently. Customers should review AWS documentation and pricing to get started.

📁 AWS Artifact now provides self-service access to previous versions of compliance reports, eliminating the need to contact AWS Support or account representatives. Customers with the IAM permission artifact:ListReportVersions—included in the managed policy AWSArtifactReportsReadOnlyAccess—can view prior SOC, ISO, and C5 report versions directly in the console by selecting available versions. Availability of historical coverage varies by compliance program, and the feature is generally available in US East (N. Virginia) and AWS GovCloud (US-West).

🚀 CHNA 2.0 combines Wayne State’s PHOENIX data warehouse with Syntasa Sentiment Analytics and Google Vertex AI to automate Community Health Needs Assessments. The solution ingests EHR, social and environmental data alongside real‑time search and social signals to surface community concerns and priorities. By decomposing reporting tasks and embedding human oversight, CHNA 2.0 delivers comprehensive, updateable CHNA reports in weeks rather than months.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has expanded availability of EC2 M8i instances to Asia Pacific (Seoul, Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore) and Canada (Central). Powered by AWS-exclusive Intel Xeon 6 processors, M8i offers up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x memory bandwidth versus prior Intel-based instances, and up to 20% higher performance than M7i. These SAP-certified general purpose instances include 13 sizes, two bare-metal options, and a new 96xlarge for the largest workloads.

🌿 AWS now publishes customer carbon footprint data within 21 days of usage, reducing the previous reporting lag of up to three months. Estimates are published between the 15th and 21st of the month following usage and are available via the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool (CCFT) in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. The CCFT dashboard retains 38 months of historical data to support trend analysis and faster emissions and cost-reduction decisions.

🚀 The new Google Cloud Partner Network is a restructured program launching in Q1 2026 that shifts partner evaluation from checklist activity to measurable customer outcomes. It centers on three pillars — simplicity, outcomes, and automation — and introduces a three-tier model: Select, Premier, and a selective Diamond tier. A competency framework measuring capacity and capability, together with an automated Partner Network Hub, will reduce administrative burden and automatically credit qualifying customer engagements.

🔒 Hybrid and multicloud environments have expanded the attack surface, creating operational complexity and fractured visibility across public clouds, private data centers and edge locations. Palo Alto Networks and Nutanix recommend an open, unified security layer that enforces consistent policies, provides inline east‑west visibility, and uses tag‑driven automation to ensure protections follow workloads. This approach aims to replace fragmented point solutions with cohesive, scalable defense-in-depth.