All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🎥 AWS Elemental MediaTailor now supports HLS Interstitials for live streams, enabling broadcasters and streaming services to insert interstitial ads using the HLS Interstitials specification. MediaTailor generates necessary metadata tags (EXT-X-DATERANGE with X-ASSET-LIST) for compatible players such as HLS.js, Shaka, Bitmovin and Apple devices, removing the need for custom client stitching. The capability integrates with MediaTailor's server-side ad insertion for frame-accurate, buffer-free transitions and preserves server-side beaconing for measurement. It supports pre-roll and mid-roll, can be toggled per playback session via a manifest query parameter, and is available in all Regions where MediaTailor operates on a pay-as-you-go basis.

🔍 Cloudflare describes enhancements to its Web Application Firewall (WAF) payload logging, which now records specific request fields and post-transformation values that triggered a rule. The feature disambiguates which branch of a rule evaluated true, logs partial matches with contextual slices, and reduces the amount of data written for large fields. Cloudflare also optimized regex compilation and memory usage, shrank median log sizes, and plans further work on binary formats and expanded WAF coverage.

⚡ Microsoft is testing an optional background preload for File Explorer on Windows 11 to reduce launch times and improve responsiveness. When enabled, the app loads automatically with no visible UI change; users can disable it by unchecking "Enable window preloading for faster launch times" in File Explorer's Folder Options under the View tab. The feature is rolling out to Windows Insiders on 25H2 in the Dev and Beta channels with preview build 26220.7271 (KB5070307). Microsoft also reorganized File Explorer's context menu into grouped flyouts to reduce clutter and has requested feedback via the Feedback Hub.

⚠️ Microsoft announced that WINS support will be removed from Windows Server releases after Windows Server 2025, with standard support for that final LTSC build continuing through November 2034. The legacy NetBIOS name registration and resolution service was deprecated in Windows Server 2022. Microsoft said WINS components, management snap-ins and automation APIs will be removed, and urged administrators to audit dependencies and migrate to DNS-based solutions to avoid disruptions.

📢 Amazon OpenSearch Service now supports OpenSearch 3.3, introducing search performance, observability, and agentic AI integration improvements. Vector search enhancements include agentic search for natural-language queries without complex DSLs, batch processing for the semantic highlighter to lower latency and improve GPU utilization, and optimizations in the Neural Search plugin. The release also makes Apache Calcite the default query engine for PPL, adds a broader PPL command library, and improves the approximation framework for more responsive pagination and dashboards. A new workload management plugin enables grouping of search traffic and tenant-level network isolation to prevent resource overuse.

🔒 Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition now supports dynamic data masking using the new pg_columnmask extension, enabling column-level protection at query time. The extension complements PostgreSQL row-level security and column grants by letting administrators define SQL-based masking policies that alter how data appears to users without changing stored values. Policies can use built-in or user-defined functions to hide, partially mask, or transform data, and multiple policies can be applied with weighted precedence. pg_columnmask protects results across WHERE, JOIN, ORDER BY, and GROUP BY clauses and is available for Aurora PostgreSQL 16.10+ and 17.6+ in all regions.

⚡ Amazon SageMaker HyperPod now supports Spot Instances, enabling customers to reduce GPU compute costs by up to 90% compared with on-demand instances. The integration is available on HyperPod EKS clusters and works with Karpenter for intelligent autoscaling, automatic Spot capacity discovery, and interruption handling. You can enable Spot when creating instance groups via the CreateCluster API or the AWS Console, and the feature supports all HyperPod instance types across available regions.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker HyperPod now supports NVIDIA Multi-Instance GPU (MIG), enabling administrators to partition a single GPU into multiple isolated devices to run simultaneous small generative AI tasks. Administrators can use an easy console configuration or a custom setup for fine-grained hardware isolation, allocate compute quotas across teams, and monitor real-time performance per partition via a utilization dashboard. Available on HyperPod clusters using the EKS orchestrator in multiple AWS Regions, this capability reduces wait times by letting data scientists run lightweight inference and interactive notebooks in parallel without consuming full GPU capacity.

🌐 Amazon CloudFront now supports bringing your own IP addresses (BYOIP) for Anycast Static IPs through VPC IP Address Manager (IPAM). Network teams can register and manage public IPv4 address pools in IPAM and assign dedicated Anycast Static IP lists to CloudFront distributions, preserving existing allow-lists and avoiding changes to application address space. The capability simplifies IP address management across AWS's global edge network and improves partner reachability and security. It is available in all commercial AWS Regions except AWS GovCloud (US) and the China regions.

🔒 Trend Micro is previewing Trend Vision One AI Security Package, a comprehensive suite due at AWS re:Invent in early December that aims to protect the full AI application stack from development through runtime. The offering combines continuous model scanning and automated AI guardrails and leverages Nvidia BlueField3 hardware acceleration. It also assembles tools such as AI Security Blueprint, Risk Insights, cloud and container security, file protection with NetApp support, an agentic SIEM with AWS native logs, and Zero Trust AI access controls.

🌐 Today Google is announcing TalayLink, a new subsea cable that will extend the previously announced interlink cable from the Australia Connect initiative to establish a diverse path between Australia and Thailand via the Indian Ocean. The project includes planned connectivity hubs in Mandurah (Western Australia) and South Thailand, the latter in partnership with AIS, plus local landing support from IGC. These investments are designed to integrate Google Cloud’s upcoming Thailand region and data center into its global network, improving resilience, routing diversity, and onward connectivity across the Indian Ocean.

📱 Google has made Quick Share interoperable with Apple's AirDrop, enabling two-way file transfers between Pixel devices and iPhones starting with the Pixel 10 family. The implementation uses AirDrop's "Everyone for 10 minutes" direct, device-to-device mode with no server intermediaries. Google says it applied threat modeling, internal security and privacy reviews, Rust parsing to reduce memory risks, and independent NetSPI testing. Users must manually confirm recipients before sharing.

🔐 Passwork 7 consolidates enterprise password and secrets management into a single, self-hosted platform supporting both human and machine credentials. The release improves credential organization with new vault types, expands RBAC and group-based permissions, and enhances audit trails and notifications. It also provides a REST API, Python connector, CLI, and Docker image for automation, plus zero-knowledge encryption and SSO/LDAP integration to help meet compliance needs.

🚀 Amazon EMR Serverless now supports Apache Spark 4.0.1 (preview), enabling teams to build data pipelines using standard ANSI SQL and native VARIANT types for semi-structured data. The release adds Apache Iceberg v3 table format to provide transactional guarantees and audit-ready change tracking. Improved streaming controls make it easier to manage stateful, real-time applications and monitor streaming jobs.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker now supports Amazon Athena for Apache Spark, combining a new notebook experience with a fast serverless Spark runtime in a single workspace. Data engineers, analysts, and data scientists can query data, run Python, develop jobs, train models, and visualize results with no infrastructure to manage and second-level billing. The service runs Spark 3.5.6, is optimized for Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake, and adds debugging, real-time Spark UI monitoring, and secure Spark Connect communication. Table-level access controls are enforced through AWS Lake Formation.

🔐 AWS Payments Cryptography now supports hybrid post-quantum TLS to protect API calls and long-lived data-in-transit using ML-KEM-based PQC. This helps enterprises mitigate “harvest now, decrypt later” risks by combining classical and post-quantum key establishment. Customers enable PQ-TLS by upgrading to a compatible AWS SDK or browser and can verify sessions via tlsDetails in CloudTrail. The capability is generally available across Regions at no added cost.

📱 AWS Device Farm now provides a fully managed Appium endpoint that developers can connect to with just a few lines of code to run interactive tests on multiple real devices from their IDE or local machine. The capability integrates with third-party tools such as Appium Inspector (hosted and local) for element inspection and debugging. Live video and log streaming deliver faster feedback in local workflows while existing server-side execution remains available for scaled, secure enterprise runs.

🔐 This AWS Security blog by Jennifer Paz outlines a layered, practical approach to reduce exposure from long‑term AWS credentials. It recommends discovery and risk assessment with CodeGuru Security, IAM Access Analyzer, credential reports, and Trusted Advisor, followed by enforcement using SCPs and RCPs to create a network data perimeter. The post also covers runtime protections (security groups, NACLs, Network Firewall, AWS WAF), automated rotation using Secrets Manager or rotation patterns, and threat detection via GuardDuty, all intended to bridge the gap until migration to temporary credentials is feasible.

🔁 EC2 Image Builder now supports automatic versioning for recipes and automatic build version increments for components, removing the need to manually manage version numbers. You can place an 'x' placeholder to auto-increment any position in a recipe version and use wildcard patterns to resolve to the highest compatible version in pipelines. The feature is available across all AWS regions, including China and GovCloud, and is accessible via Console, CLI, API, CloudFormation, and CDK.

🧪 Amazon Web Services has added natural-language test Q&A generation to Automated Reasoning checks in Amazon Bedrock Guardrails. The capability generates up to N test Q&As from input documents to accelerate creating and validating formal verification policies. Automated Reasoning checks apply formal methods to detect correct model outputs and report up to 99% accuracy in identifying correct responses and reducing hallucinations. The feature is available in multiple US and EU Regions and accessible via the Bedrock console and Python SDK.