All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔒 Microsoft will block mobile devices running outdated email software from connecting to Exchange Online if they use Exchange ActiveSync versions below 16.1, effective March 1, 2026. The change applies to native mobile email apps that rely on EAS and does not affect on-premises Exchange installations or users of Outlook Mobile, which uses a different sync method. Administrators can identify impacted devices with a provided PowerShell query and should coordinate updates with device and app vendors to avoid service disruption.

🔒 HoundDog.ai provides a privacy-first static code scanner that embeds detection and governance into development to prevent data leaks before code reaches production. The Rust-based engine performs deep interprocedural analysis across files and functions and can scan millions of lines in under a minute. It traces more than 100 sensitive data types into risky sinks such as logs, LLM prompts, files, local storage, and third-party SDKs, and integrates with IDEs and CI to enforce allowlists and auto-generate RoPA, PIA and DPIA evidence.

🚨 Google Workspace with Gemini helps agencies convert complex, legally precise emergency documents into clear, actionable public-facing tools almost instantly. By parsing executive orders to extract locations, curfews, and exemptions and generating interactive prototypes or safety-check interfaces directly in the conversation window, the system shortens deployment from days to minutes. Built with public-sector security like FedRAMP High, data residency controls, DLP, and client-side encryption, it provides a repeatable blueprint for rapid, trustworthy disaster response.

🔁 The Amazon Quick Suite browser extension now supports Amazon Quick Flows, enabling users to run workflows directly in their web browser without manually extracting page data. You can invoke flows you created or that were shared with you and pass web page content as input while staying on the site. This supports routine tasks like contract analysis and dashboard report generation. The capability is available in select regions with no extra extension fees beyond standard Quick Flows usage.

🧠 Amazon Quick Suite now adds memory to its chat agents, enabling personalized responses based on prior conversations and stated preferences. The feature stores inferred user preferences—such as response format, acronyms, dashboards, and integrations—and lets users view and remove any remembered items. Users may also choose Private Mode, in which chats are not used to infer memories. Memory is currently available in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon).

🚀 Amazon Web Services has launched EC2 M8i-flex instances in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. These instances use custom Intel Xeon 6 processors exclusive to AWS, delivering up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth versus previous-generation Intel-based instances. Compared with M7i-flex, M8i-flex delivers up to 20% higher performance overall and substantially larger gains for targeted workloads such as PostgreSQL, NGINX web serving, and AI recommendation models. They are offered in common general-purpose sizes from large to 16xlarge and are positioned as a first choice for applications that do not fully utilize all compute resources.

🔔 AWS Clean Rooms now publishes events to Amazon EventBridge to signal new member invitations and table readiness. Invited collaborators receive immediate EventBridge notifications when added to a collaboration, and members are alerted when AWS Entity Resolution resources (ID mapping tables and namespaces) are associated. This enables automated, near-real-time workflows, reduces manual polling, and shortens time-to-action from hours to minutes. Organizations can more quickly start analyses and increase transparency between collaborators.

📊 You can now enable CloudWatch metrics for Route 53 Resolver endpoints to monitor per-endpoint DNS performance and the health of target name servers. The metrics include query response latency plus counts of SERVFAIL, NXDOMAIN, REFUSED and FORMERR responses, and timeouts for outbound target servers. These details make it easier to troubleshoot hybrid DNS resolution issues and build alerts and dashboards; standard CloudWatch and Resolver endpoint charges apply.

🔒 Google has announced it will retire its Dark Web report feature, stopping new dark‑web scans on January 15, 2026 and fully discontinuing the tool on February 16, 2026. The company said feedback showed the report provided only general information and lacked clear, actionable next steps, so it will delete related data when the feature is retired and offers users an option to remove their monitoring profile immediately. Google launched the service in March 2023 and expanded it to all account holders in July 2024, and it now recommends stronger protections such as passkeys for phishing‑resistant MFA and using Results about you to manage personal information in Search.

🔔 Google is discontinuing its Dark Web Report, halting new monitoring on January 15, 2026 and removing stored results on February 16, 2026. The feature notified users when their email addresses or other personal data appeared on the dark web and consolidated potential exposures for faster response. Google said user feedback indicated the report did not provide clear, actionable next steps, and it will instead focus on tools such as Google Password Manager, Password Checkup, Security and Privacy Checkups, Passkey, and 2-Step Verification. Users can also use the Results about you tool to find and request removal of personal information from Search.

🔒AWS Security details its incident response to multiple high-scale npm supply chain campaigns, including the compromised Nx package, the Shai-Hulud worm, and a token-farming operation detected by Amazon Inspector. Teams enacted rapid containment (repository blocklisting, OpenSSF registration), performed deep analysis using AI-assisted detonation in sandboxes, and automated disclosures to protect customers. The effort produced improved behavioral detections, GenAI prompt guardrails for Amazon Q, and strengthened collaboration with the security community to reduce future exposure.

🚀Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) is now available in all availability zones within six additional AWS Regions, expanding options for running VMware workloads on AWS Nitro-powered EC2 bare-metal. You can deploy a complete VMware Cloud Foundation environment in hours using the guided workflow or CLI automation, accelerating migrations and data center exits. This expansion improves latency, supports data residency requirements, and adds redundancy choices for high availability.

📣 Amazon Connect now supports two new evaluation question types to capture deeper insights on human and AI agent performance. Managers can add multiple-selection questions to record several items—such as products a customer was interested in—and date fields to log events like when an application was submitted and approved. These features are available in all regions where Amazon Connect is offered.

🚀 Starting today, Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink is available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region to help customers build and operate real-time stream processing applications with lower latency and simpler operations. The managed service reduces the complexity of deploying and maintaining Apache Flink applications and integrates with Amazon MSK, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon OpenSearch Service, DynamoDB Streams, Amazon S3 and custom connectors. This regional launch enables local teams to accelerate streaming analytics, continuous ETL, monitoring, and event-driven processing while avoiding direct cluster management.

📊 AWS now supports cost allocation using workforce user attributes imported into IAM Identity Center. Customers can enable attributes such as cost center, division, organization, and department as cost allocation tags to automatically attribute per-user subscription and on-demand application fees to internal business units. Costs are visible in AWS Cost Explorer and AWS CUR 2.0 and the capability is generally available in all Regions except GovCloud (US) and China (Beijing and Ningxia).

🔌 Google Cloud has integrated the Model Context Protocol (MCP) into Antigravity, its new AI-first IDE, enabling LLM-based agents to access enterprise data services directly within the development workflow. The Antigravity MCP Store lets developers install connectors for AlloyDB, BigQuery, Spanner, Cloud SQL, Looker and other Data Cloud products, configuring projects, regions, and credentials through a guided UI. Once connected, agents receive executable tools for schema exploration, query development, optimization, forecasting, catalog search, and semantic validation, while credentials are stored securely and MCP standardizes access across services.

🏆 Fortinet has been named a 2025 Gartner Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, marking the eighth consecutive year of recognition. Based on feedback from 458 verified end users, Fortinet earned a 4.9/5 average rating with 97% saying they would recommend the product. The company attributes the result to its Secure Networking platform that converges networking and security via FortiOS, FortiLink and AI-enabled operations to simplify management and lower risk.

🔐 Amazon EKS now offers centralized network policy controls with ClusterNetworkPolicy and DNS-based egress filtering to improve protection for Kubernetes workloads and their external integrations. These enhancements build on existing Kubernetes NetworkPolicies in the Amazon VPC CNI and enable cluster-wide enforcement of access filters. The features are available for new EKS clusters running Kubernetes 1.29+ in all commercial AWS Regions; support for existing clusters will follow. ClusterNetworkPolicy requires VPC CNI v1.21.0+, while DNS-based policies are supported in EKS Auto Mode-launched EC2 instances.

📄 AWS now lets you export customized Billing and Cost Management Dashboards as formatted PDF reports and download individual widget data as CSV files. These features eliminate screenshots and manual formatting by preserving dashboard layouts for stakeholder reports and enabling granular analysis in spreadsheet tools. The exports are available at no additional cost in all AWS commercial Regions (excluding AWS China Regions). To begin, open the Billing and Cost Management console and select Dashboards.

🛡️ Microsoft unveiled a new security policy, In Scope by Default, at Black Hat Europe to expand its bug-bounty coverage to any critical vulnerabilities that demonstrably affect its online services. The program covers Microsoft-managed code as well as third-party and open source components when no existing bounty exists. Researchers submit reports via Microsoft’s coordinated disclosure platform under defined rules that permit broad red-team testing while prohibiting credential access, phishing, and excessive DoS.