All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔒 AWS Security Incident Response is now HITRUST CSF certified, demonstrating alignment with rigorous security and privacy controls used by healthcare, life sciences, and other regulated sectors. The certification confirms that organizations can leverage AWS Security Incident Response to automate alert monitoring, streamline incident coordination, and access 24/7 security experts. Customers can inherit AWS HITRUST scores to reduce audit burden and integrate via console, CLI, or APIs.

🔒 Microsoft outlines a multi-year plan to transition to post-quantum cryptography, stressing that preparation must begin now. The post highlights investments in both quantum research (including Majorana 1 and 4D geometric error correction) and cryptographic readiness, plus collaboration with standards bodies such as NIST and IETF. It describes tools like the Adams Bridge Accelerator, PQC previews, and the Quantum Safe Program with a phased roadmap targeting early adoption by 2029 and completion by 2033.

🔐 Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink now supports Amazon KMS Customer Managed Keys (CMK), giving customers the option to use their own keys instead of AWS-owned keys. This provides greater control over encryption at rest, key rotation, and access policies for data stored in MSF. The update helps address compliance and governance requirements and is available by region; refer to the documentation for implementation details.

🔧 This Microsoft Azure blog post, the second entry in the six-part Agent Factory series, explains how tool ecosystems are defining the next wave of agentic AI. It argues the industry is moving from single-model prompts to extensible platforms that let agents discover and invoke a broad set of capabilities at runtime. The piece highlights the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Azure AI Foundry for secure, enterprise-grade tool integration, and summarizes five best practices for governance, identity, and observability to achieve scalable, production-ready agents.

📊 AWS announces general availability of AWS Billing and Cost Management Dashboards, a customizable feature that consolidates spending data from AWS Cost Explorer, Savings Plans, and Reserved Instance coverage and utilization reports. Users can build cost, usage, Savings Plans, and Reserved Instance widgets with line, bar, stacked bar, or table visualizations, arrange layouts, and share dashboards across accounts. The capability is available at no additional cost in all AWS commercial Regions except AWS China Regions.

🔗 The Harmony SASE MCP Server connects AI and IDE assistants to Harmony SASE, enabling direct, secure access to networking and security context. Built on the open Model Context Protocol (MCP), it exposes a curated set of endpoints so AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot can enrich workflows, accelerate investigations, and integrate SASE telemetry into familiar analyst and developer interfaces.

🔒 Fortinet presents Fortinet Unified SASE as a natively integrated platform that combines cloud-delivered FortiSASE with Fortinet Secure SD‑WAN on a single operating system to avoid the fragmentation common in many SASE solutions. The article stresses a single-agent experience via FortiClient, one management plane powered by FortiOS, and consolidated threat intelligence from FortiGuard Labs. It highlights flexible deployment choices, global POPs, and sovereign SASE options to meet data residency and compliance requirements. Fortinet also emphasizes AI/ML-driven correlation and GenAI-assisted policy and investigation to improve detection and operational efficiency.

🤝 In a Threat Vector podcast, Michael Sikorski and Michael Daniel of the Cyber Threat Alliance discuss how competing vendors must nonetheless collaborate to counter shared threats. Daniel recalls how pooled observations during the 2017 WannaCry outbreak revealed its worm-like propagation and accelerated industry response. He emphasizes that the main obstacles to sharing are human—culture, legal risk, and lack of executive prioritization—and that concrete guardrails (antitrust-compliance statements, embargo protocols, and equal treatment) build the trust needed for timely intelligence exchange. The post cautions that as adversaries adopt AI and automation, systematic collaboration is essential.

🔧 AWS Clean Rooms now lets code authors configure error message detail for analyses using PySpark. When every collaboration member approves an analysis, authors can enable more detailed errors to accelerate debugging and testing. This reduces troubleshooting time for models such as marketing attribution from weeks to hours or days while preserving collaborator data protections.

🔓 AWS has made two OpenAI models with open weights — gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b — automatically available to all Amazon Bedrock users as of August 5, 2025. Users can access them immediately via the Amazon Bedrock console playground or the unified Bedrock API in supported regions. Administrators retain full control and can restrict usage with AWS IAM policies and Service Control Policies.

🚀 Amazon MSK now supports Graviton3-based M7g instances for Standard brokers on MSK Provisioned clusters across eight additional AWS Regions, including both AWS GovCloud regions and several Asia Pacific and European locations. M7g instances offer up to 24% lower compute costs and up to 29% higher write and read throughput versus comparable M5-based clusters. The expansion helps customers optimize performance and reduce operational expenses for production Kafka workloads.

🔒 Amazon Web Services (AWS) has completed the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (NHS DSPT) assessment for 2024–25, achieving Standards Exceeded. The certification is valid until June 30, 2026 and is available via NHS England and AWS Artifact. NHS DSPT measures performance against the National Data Guardian’s 10 data security standards, covering Personal Confidential Data, Continuity Planning, and IT Protection. AWS emphasises that security is a shared responsibility and directs customers to its compliance resources.

📞 Amazon Connect now supports multi-user web, in-app, and video calling, allowing multiple participants to join the same session with an agent via browser or mobile app. Agents can dynamically add participants during live calls or host scheduled multi-party sessions, and attendees can use audio, video, and screen sharing. This feature enables richer, more inclusive interactions for scenarios such as joint financial planning, family medical consultations, and meetings with legal representatives or translators.

🔔 Amazon Web Services has made EC2 I7i storage-optimized instances available in AWS Europe (Frankfurt, London) and Asia Pacific (Malaysia, Sydney, Tokyo). Powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and 3rd generation AWS Nitro SSDs, I7i delivers up to 23% better compute and >10% improved price performance versus I4i, plus up to 45TB NVMe and significant latency and IOPS gains. Eleven sizes (including two bare metal) offer up to 100 Gbps network and 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth, and a torn write prevention feature supporting 16 KB blocks helps remove database bottlenecks.

🔔 AWS announced general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon EC2 R8i and R8i‑flex instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors. AWS says these instances deliver up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth of prior Intel-based generations, with up to 20–60% faster results on targeted workloads. R8i provides 13 sizes including a new 96xlarge and SAP certification, while R8i‑flex offers common, cost-efficient sizes from large to 16xlarge. Instances are initially available in N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, and Spain and can be purchased via On‑Demand, Spot, or Savings Plans.

🤝 Strong vendor–partner alignment drives faster resolution, tailored deployments and sustained security outcomes for customers. Palo Alto Networks frames this mutual commitment as the value exchange and supports it with investments such as a refreshed Learning Center for Partners to build role-based expertise. When vendors and partners operate as a unified ecosystem, platformization reduces silos, lowers total cost of ownership and enables unified visibility and faster remediation. Weak collaboration, conversely, increases downtime, cost and risk.

🔒 At Talos, JJ Cummings — leader of the Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team — discusses the delicate work of handling partner-provided, sensitive information while conducting nation‑state investigations. He outlines how analysts create unattributable or alternatively attributable reporting to preserve sources and still deliver operationally useful findings. JJ credits colleagues such as Matt Olney and Ryan Pentney and emphasizes his team's role as force multipliers in incident response, threat hunting, and deep analysis.

📹 TwelveLabs Pegasus 1.2 is now available in US East (N. Virginia) and Asia Pacific (Seoul) through Amazon Bedrock. The video-first language model is optimized for long-form content and combines visual, audio, and textual signals to deliver advanced video-to-text generation and temporal understanding. Regional availability reduces latency and simplifies architecture for enterprise video-intelligence applications. To begin, request model access via the Amazon Bedrock console.

🔐 Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for SQL Server now supports Kerberos authentication when instances are joined to a self-managed Microsoft Active Directory. Previously, Kerberos integration required AWS Managed Microsoft AD; customers can now enable Kerberos authentication with their existing on-premises or self-managed AD environments. This change simplifies migrations and preserves enterprise identity configurations while continuing to support existing integrations with AWS Managed AD. The feature is available in all AWS Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

🚀 Microsoft frames a new enterprise archetype—Frontier Firms—that embed AI agents across workflows and rearchitect operations around a modern cloud foundation. The post warns that AI cannot scale on legacy systems and that technical debt undermines agility, security, and innovation. It cites IDC findings showing substantial gains in agility, resilience, ROI, and speed to market when organizations migrate and modernize on Azure, and urges continuous modernization and use of Microsoft’s App Modernization Guidance.