All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Layered Security for SMBs During the Holiday Season

🔒 Small and medium-size businesses face rising, measurable cyber risk as ransomware incidents increase and attacks spike during the holiday season. Resource constraints and end-of-life Windows 10 devices magnify exposure, while firmware-level and endpoint gaps can defeat traditional defenses. A layered, defense-in-depth approach across silicon, the operating system, and endpoints reduces attack surfaces. Business-grade devices such as the ASUS Expert Series integrate these protections to turn necessary upgrades into strategic security investments.

AWS Control Tower adds automatic account enrollment

🔁 AWS Control Tower customers can now automatically enroll member accounts simply by moving them into an Organizational Unit (OU). When moved, Control Tower applies the destination OU's baseline configurations and controls and removes the originals from the prior OU, removing the need for manual re-registration. This streamlines provisioning by allowing accounts to be created and then placed in the correct OU using the AWS Organizations console or the CreateAccount and MoveAccount APIs. Customers on landing zone version 3.1+ can opt in by toggling the automatically enroll accounts flag or by setting RemediationTypes to Inheritance_Drift in the CreateLandingZone or UpdateLandingZone APIs.

Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 Now in AWS GovCloud (US)

🚀 Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 is now available in Amazon Bedrock within AWS GovCloud (US‑West and US‑East) via US‑GOV Cross‑Region Inference. The model emphasizes advanced instruction following, superior code generation and refactoring judgment, and is optimized for long‑horizon agents and high‑volume workloads. Bedrock adds an automatic context editor and a new external memory tool so Claude can clear stale tool-call context and store information outside the context window, improving accuracy and performance for security, financial services, and enterprise automation use cases.

Amazon Braket Adds Native CUDA-Q Support in Notebooks

🔬 Amazon Braket notebook instances now include native support for CUDA-Q, enabled by upgrading the underlying OS to Amazon Linux 2023 to deliver improved performance, security, and compatibility for quantum development and production-ready workflows. Developers can run GPU-accelerated quantum circuit simulation alongside access to QPUs from IonQ, Rigetti, and IQM within the managed notebook environment. This eliminates the need for local deployment or separate Hybrid Jobs, streamlining hybrid quantum-classical experimentation. CUDA-Q support is available in all Regions where Braket operates.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone Adds IPv6 for VPC Endpoints

🌐 Amazon now supports Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addresses for S3 Express One Zone gateway VPC endpoints, enabling access over IPv6 or DualStack without additional translation infrastructure. This applies in all Regions where the storage class exists at no extra cost. You can enable IPv6 for new or existing endpoints via Console, CLI, SDK, or CloudFormation. See the S3 User Guide to get started.

Cloudflare Introduces Python Workflows in Beta Release

🐍 Cloudflare has announced Python Workflows in beta, enabling developers to orchestrate multi-step, durable applications on Workers using Python. The feature aims for feature parity with the existing JavaScript SDK while adapting APIs to Pythonic idioms—using decorators for step callbacks and snake_case naming for method calls. Under the hood it leverages Pyodide and CPython in the runtime, exposes WorkflowStep as an RPC-backed JsProxy for at-most-once durable execution, and supports DAG-style concurrency via asyncio.gather. Targeted use cases include data pipelines, ML/LLM training loops, and autonomous agents where step-level retries, state persistence, and explicit wait points simplify orchestration.

Google Public Sector Achieves CMMC Level 2 Certification

🔒 Google Public Sector announced it has achieved CMMC Level 2 certification, validated by a certified third-party assessment organization (C3PAO). The certification confirms that its internal systems used to process and store Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) meet DoD cybersecurity expectations. While the certification covers Google’s internal systems and does not extend to customer environments, Google highlights support for the Defense Industrial Base through FedRAMP-authorized cloud services and published compliance resources, including a Google Workspace CMMC Implementation Guide, to help partners accelerate their own CMMC journeys.

CloudWatch Agent Adds Shared Memory Utilization Metrics

📈 Amazon Web Services announced that the Amazon CloudWatch Agent can now collect shared memory utilization metrics from Linux hosts running on Amazon EC2 or in on‑premises environments. This complements existing memory metrics (free, used, cached) and captures memory used by large enterprise databases and in‑memory applications. Administrators can enable the feature in the agent configuration file to obtain accurate total memory usage for sizing and optimization. The capability is available in all commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions; CloudWatch custom metrics pricing applies.

Amazon EC2 High Memory U7i Instances Now in GovCloud

🚀 Amazon Web Services has added High Memory U7i instances to AWS GovCloud, offering 12TiB (u7i-12tb.224xlarge) and 16TiB (u7in-16tb.224xlarge) in GovCloud (US-West) and 24TiB (u7in-24tb.224xlarge) in GovCloud (US-East). These 7th‑generation instances use custom 4th‑generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) processors, provide 896 vCPUs and DDR5 memory, and support ENA Express. The u7i-12tb delivers up to 100Gbps network and EBS throughput while the 16tb and 24tb variants deliver up to 200Gbps, making them well suited for mission‑critical in‑memory databases like SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server.

Amazon EC2 C7i‑flex Instances Now Available in UAE Region

🚀Amazon Web Services has launched EC2 C7i-flex instances in the Middle East (UAE), offering up to 19% better price performance versus C6i. Powered by AWS-exclusive 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) custom processors and priced about 5% below C7i, these instances cover common sizes from large through 16xlarge. They target web and application servers, caches, databases, Apache Kafka, Elasticsearch and other compute-intensive workloads that don’t fully utilize all vCPUs. For sustained heavy-CPU needs or very large configurations, customers can continue to use standard C7i instances.

Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio Adds Catalog Notifications

🔔 Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now delivers real-time notifications for data catalog activities, including new dataset publications, metadata changes, subscription requests, comments, and access approvals. Alerts are surfaced via a bell icon on the project home page and through a notification center that shows a recent list and a full, filterable tabular view by catalog, project, and event type. The feature is available in all regions where SageMaker Unified Studio is supported.

AWS Private CA Adds ML-DSA Post-Quantum Certificates

🔐 AWS Private CA now supports the post-quantum digital signature algorithm ML-DSA (NIST FIPS 204), enabling organizations to create CAs and issue certificates designed to resist quantum attacks. The feature lets you test certificate issuance, identity verification, and code signing using ML-DSA, and supports CRLs and OCSP responders. Availability spans all commercial AWS Regions, AWS GovCloud (US), and China Regions to help teams begin transitioning PKI toward post-quantum cryptography.

AWS adds IPv6 for S3 Gateway and Interface VPC Endpoints

🌐 Amazon Web Services now supports IPv6 addresses for AWS PrivateLink Gateway and Interface VPC endpoints for Amazon S3. To enable IPv6 connectivity on new or existing S3 endpoints, set the IP address type to IPv6 or Dualstack; S3 will update route tables for gateway endpoints and provision ENIs with IPv6 for interface endpoints. IPv6 for S3 VPC endpoints is available in all AWS Commercial Regions and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions at no additional cost, and can be configured via the Console, CLI, SDK, or CloudFormation.

CrowdStrike Named Overall Leader in 2025 ITDR Compass

🔒 CrowdStrike has been named the Overall Leader in the 2025 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Identity Threat Detection and Response, achieving top placement across Product, Innovation, Market, and Overall Ranking. The report cites Falcon Next-Gen Identity Security for its cloud-native design, AI/ML-driven detections, behavioral analytics, and automated identity-centric response. KuppingerCole highlights unified visibility across Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, Ping, AWS IAM and SaaS via Falcon Shield, and notes deep integrations with XDR, SIEM, SOAR, IdP, IGA, PAM, and ITSM to accelerate detection and remediation for human, non-human, and AI agent identities.

Windows 11 Start Menu Redesigned with Scrollable All Apps

🔔 The Windows 11 Start menu has received its first major redesign since 2021 and is rolling out with the November 11 Patch Tuesday update. The new Start is scrollable and places the All apps list on the main screen, offering a categorized view (groups built locally from a JSON file) and a classic A‑to‑Z grid. The UI adapts column counts to screen size, lets you hide the Recommended feed via Settings > Personalization > Start, and is included in Build 26200.7019 and 26100.7019 or newer though it may not enable immediately after updating.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v11.1 Enhances DR and MSP

🔁NAKIVO has released Backup & Replication v11.1, expanding disaster recovery and MSP capabilities and adding five interface languages—French, Italian, German, Polish and Chinese. The update brings major Proxmox VE improvements, including Flash VM Boot, VM replication and template backup/recovery, automated backup verification with screenshots, direct tape recovery, and Exchange/SQL log truncation. It also introduces MSP Direct Connect to remove client-side port changes, Real-Time Replication for VMware with automated IO Filter and Journal Service installation, and granular folder- and volume-level backups for Windows and Linux physical machines with encryption, immutability and air-gapping options.

Microsoft tests faster Quick Machine Recovery in Windows 11

🔁 Microsoft is testing a faster version of Quick Machine Recovery (QMR) in Windows 11 that runs a one‑time scan in the Windows Recovery Environment to more quickly identify and apply fixes for systems that fail to boot. When WinRE launches QMR it connects to the internet to upload crash data so administrators can remove problematic updates or adjust settings remotely. The update also lets administrators and users toggle Smart App Control from Windows Security without performing a clean OS install, and is currently available to Insiders on Dev and Beta via Build 26220.7070 (KB5070300).

Amazon VPC Lattice Adds Custom Domain Name Support

🌐 Amazon VPC Lattice now lets resource owners assign a custom domain name to a resource configuration, enabling layer‑4 access to databases, clusters and TLS‑based endpoints across VPCs and accounts. Owners specify a custom domain and share the resource configuration; VPC Lattice then provisions and manages a private hosted zone in the consumer VPC so consumers can resolve and access the resource using that domain. Resource owners may use AWS, customer‑owned, or third‑party domains, and consumers can exercise granular controls over which domains VPC Lattice manages. The feature is available at no additional cost in Regions where VPC Lattice resource configuration is offered.

When to Use Sub-Agents Versus Agents as Tools for ADK

🧭 This post explains when to use sub-agents versus packaging agents as tools when building multi-agent systems with Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK). It contrasts agents-as-tools — encapsulated, stateless specialists invoked like deterministic function calls — with sub-agents, which are stateful, context-aware delegates that manage multi-step workflows. The guidance highlights trade-offs across task complexity, context sharing, reusability, and autonomy, and illustrates the patterns with data-agent and travel-planner examples to help architects choose efficient, scalable designs.

Ericsson Secures Data Integrity with Dataplex Governance

🔒 Ericsson has implemented a global data governance framework using Dataplex Universal Catalog on Google Cloud to ensure data integrity, discoverability, and compliance across its Managed Services operation. The program standardized a business glossary, automated quality checks with incident-driven alerts, and visualized column-level lineage to support analytics, AI, and automation at scale. It balances defensive compliance with offensive innovation and embeds stewardship through Ericsson’s Data Operating Model.