All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

⚠️ Microsoft says the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool (MCT) version 26100.6584 released on September 29, 2025, may close unexpectedly on Windows 10 22H2 devices without showing an error. The company is working on a fix and recommends downloading a Disk Image (ISO) for x64 systems as a temporary workaround. Microsoft also notes the MCT is not supported on Windows 10 ARM64 machines, following earlier ARM64 compatibility problems after the Windows 11 25H2 rollout.

🔐 Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is now generally available, offering an agentic platform to build, deploy, and operate agents securely at scale without infrastructure management. It adds VPC support, extended eight-hour runtimes, session isolation, and initial Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol support. Identity, Gateway, and Observability features provide secure authorization, tool discovery, and CloudWatch/OTEL monitoring.

🔐 Apple has increased the top award in its Apple Security Bounty program to $2m for exploit chains that emulate sophisticated mercenary spyware. Bonuses for Lockdown Mode bypasses and vulnerabilities found in beta software can more than double that payout, potentially exceeding $5m. Apple also raised many category rewards — including $100,000 for a Gatekeeper bypass and $1m for broad unauthorized iCloud access — and introduced a Target Flags initiative to speed and standardize exploitability demonstrations.

🔍 Amazon CloudWatch is generally available with Generative AI Observability, providing end-to-end telemetry for AI applications and AgentCore-managed agents. It expands monitoring beyond model runtime to include Built-in Tools, Gateways, Memory, and Identity, surfacing latency, token usage, errors, and performance across components. The capability integrates with orchestration frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, and Strands Agents, and works with existing CloudWatch features and pricing for underlying telemetry.

🚀 Amazon ElastiCache now offers vector search generally available with Valkey 8.2, enabling indexing, searching, and updating billions of high-dimensional embeddings from providers such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, Anthropic, and OpenAI with microsecond latency and up to 99% recall. Key use cases include semantic caching for LLMs, multi-turn conversational agents, and RAG-enabled agentic systems to reduce latency and cost. Vector search runs on node-based clusters in all AWS Regions at no additional cost, and existing Valkey or Redis OSS clusters can be upgraded to Valkey 8.2 with no downtime.

📢 AWS is updating the availability status of a range of services and features across three lifecycle categories: moving to Maintenance, entering Sunset, and reaching End of Support. Services moving to maintenance will stop accepting new customers on Nov 7, 2025, while current customers can continue using them as they evaluate alternatives. Several services, including Amazon FinSpace, AWS IoT Greengrass v1, and AWS Proton, are entering sunset with documented timelines (typically ~12 months). AWS Mainframe Modernization App Testing has reached end of support as of Oct 7, 2025. AWS provides migration guides and support resources to help customers transition.

📣 AWS Config now supports three additional resource types—AWS::ApiGatewayV2::Integration, AWS::CloudTrail::EventDataStore, and AWS::Config::StoredQuery—providing broader visibility across AWS environments. If you have recording enabled for all resource types, AWS Config will automatically begin tracking these new types. They are available for use in Config rules and Config aggregators in all Regions where the resources exist. This expansion enhances your ability to discover, assess, audit, and remediate a wider range of resources.

⚠ Microsoft warned that devices running Windows 11 23H2 Home and Pro editions will stop receiving security updates after November 11, 2025. The November 2025 monthly security update will be the final update for those editions. Users should upgrade to Windows 11 24H2 or later to remain protected; note that some PCs may be prevented from upgrading by a safeguard for SenseShield code-obfuscation drivers.

🔒 Apple has raised its top bounty for iOS zero‑click system‑level remote code execution from $1 million to $2 million, with additional bonuses for Lockdown Mode bypasses and beta‑stage reports that can push awards above $5 million. The change coincides with the rollout of Memory Integrity Enforcement in A19/A19 Pro chips, which leverages Arm's MTE/EMTE to harden memory safety. Apple will also provide 1,000 iPhone 17 devices to civil society members at risk.

🔒 AWS Client VPN now supports macOS Tahoe (26.0) with client version 5.3.1. You can run the AWS-supplied VPN client on the latest macOS releases; desktop clients are provided free and can be downloaded from the AWS Client VPN download page. AWS Client VPN is a managed service that securely connects remote workers to AWS and on-premises networks and already supports macOS 13–15, Windows 10/11 (x64 and Arm64), and Ubuntu 22.04/24.04. This update helps organizations maintain secure remote access as endpoints upgrade to the latest macOS.

🔕 Google is updating Chrome to automatically revoke website notification permissions for sites that haven't been visited recently on both desktop and Android. The feature targets sites that send a high volume of notifications while receiving very low user engagement — Google found under 1% of alerts generate interactions. Chrome will notify users when a permission is removed and makes it easy to restore access via Safety Check or by revisiting the site and opting back in. Users who prefer to keep persistent notifications can disable the automatic revocation entirely.

🔒 Apple has expanded and redesigned its bug bounty program, doubling the top reward to $2 million for zero-click remote compromise reports and enabling bonus payouts that can push awards above $5 million. The new payout tiers raise rewards across multiple attack categories and add a $1,000 encouragement award for low-impact findings. Apple broadened the wireless-proximity category to include C1/C1X and N1 chips and plans to distribute 1,000 secured iPhone 17 devices in 2026.

⚡ Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now supports Graviton4-based R8g DB instances in AWS Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Asia Pacific (Seoul). R8g offers larger sizes up to 48xlarge with an 8:1 memory-to-vCPU ratio and DDR5 memory, including new 24xlarge and 48xlarge options delivering up to 192 vCPUs, up to 50 Gbps networking, and up to 40 Gbps EBS bandwidth. AWS reports up to 40% performance and up to 29% price/performance improvements over Graviton3 equivalents, varying by engine, version, and workload. You can launch or upgrade instances through the Amazon RDS console or AWS CLI with a simple instance type modification.

🔒 Google Cloud has launched a Network Security Learning Path culminating in the Designing Network Security in Google Cloud skill badge to help organizations secure dynamic cloud networks. The program covers design, build, and management of secure VPCs, GKE lockdown, NGFW rules, Cloud VPN/Interconnect, and Cloud Armor for WAF and DDoS protection. Learners validate skills through a hands-on break-fix challenge lab simulating incidents like firewall policy breaches and data exfiltration.

🔒 As CSO for Google Public Sector, the post frames an urgency-driven approach to modern government security, emphasizing AI-powered threat detection, Zero Trust engineering, and a shared responsibility model. It highlights how Google Security Operations (FedRAMP High), fused threat intelligence from VirusTotal and Mandiant, and fast incident response strengthen mission continuity. The piece stresses that legacy defenses are insufficient against AI-enhanced adversaries and calls for proactive, intelligence-led modernization.

🔁 Amazon Connect now supports copy and bulk edit for agent scheduling configuration, making it faster to create and maintain schedules. Administrators can copy existing scheduling configurations—such as a weekday shift profile to create a weekend variant—or clone a full schedule from one agent to multiple new hires. Bulk edits allow selective updates to fields like time zone and start date without altering weekly working hours, reducing manager time spent on configuration and improving operational efficiency.

🔔 Amazon Connect now supports agent schedule adherence notifications, enabling supervisors to receive automated alerts by email or text (via EventBridge) when agents fall outside defined adherence thresholds. You can create rules—such as alerting when adherence drops below 85% in a trailing 15‑minute window—to notify supervisors proactively. These automated notifications remove the need for constant dashboard monitoring and help teams intervene before service levels decline.

🖥️ Microsoft has updated Copilot on Windows to let users link Outlook and Gmail accounts, plus Google Drive, Calendar, and Contacts, and to generate and export Office files directly from prompts. The change is rolling out to Windows Insiders via the Microsoft Store for devices running Copilot version 1.25095.161.0 or later and must be enabled manually in the app's Connectors settings. Responses longer than 600 characters now include an export button to save content as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or PDF files. Microsoft asked testers to provide feedback from within the Copilot app.

🎓Certification gave Matt Heldstab a clear framework and the confidence to tackle complex virtualization and multi-cloud challenges. Preparing for VCP certifications and VMware Cloud Foundation exams taught him architecture best practices, troubleshooting patterns, and how to communicate effectively with leadership. Hands-on lab work and community engagement—especially through VMUG—accelerated his development and enabled him to lead projects and speak publicly. He frames certification as a mindset shift from reactive operator to strategic architect.

🔒 Google has launched an AI Vulnerability Reward Program (AI VRP) offering base rewards up to $20,000 and up to $30,000 with multipliers for validated AI-product bugs. The program moves AI-related reports from the Abuse VRP into a dedicated stream to simplify submissions and unify reward assessment. In-scope products include Search, Gemini apps and Workspace, and qualifying issues cover data exfiltration, phishing enablement and model theft. Content-focused prompt injections and jailbreaks remain out of scope and should be reported via in-product tools.