All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Meta Adds Scam Warnings to WhatsApp and Messenger Apps

🔒 Meta is rolling out new anti-scam features for WhatsApp and Messenger. On WhatsApp, users will receive warnings when attempting to share their screen with unknown contacts during video calls to help prevent accidental exposure of bank details or verification codes. On Messenger, an opt-in Scam detection setting flags potentially suspicious messages from unknown senders; detection runs on-device to preserve end-to-end encryption unless users choose to submit recent messages for AI review, which removes E2EE. Meta also said it has taken action against thousands of impersonating pages and disrupted millions of accounts tied to organized scam centers.

The Signals Loop: Fine-tuning for AI Apps and Agents

🔁 Microsoft positions the signals loop — continuous capture of user interactions and telemetry with systematic fine‑tuning — as essential for building adaptive, reliable AI apps and agents. The post explains that simple RAG and prompting approaches often lack the accuracy and engagement needed for complex use cases, and that continuous learning drives sustained improvements. It highlights Dragon Copilot and GitHub Copilot as examples where telemetry‑driven fine‑tuning yielded substantial performance and experience gains, and presents Azure AI Foundry as a unified platform to operationalize these feedback loops at scale.

Maximizing Gateway Security Beyond Basic Configuration

🛡️ This article by Andrius Buinovskis of NordLayer explains why default gateway setups often leave gaps in security, performance, and compliance. It recommends four core actions: network segmentation, multiple distributed gateways to avoid single points of failure, optimization for geographically dispersed workforces, and layered cloud firewall controls to restrict ports and protocols. The guidance aligns with Zero Trust principles and highlights regional privacy rules such as GDPR and CCPA.

Amazon Corretto October 2025 LTS Security Updates Released

🔔 Amazon released quarterly security and critical updates for Amazon Corretto LTS builds on October 21, 2025, providing new binaries for Corretto 25.0.1, 21.0.9, 17.0.17, 11.0.29 and 8u472. The distributions for Generic Linux, Alpine and macOS now include Async-Profiler, a low‑overhead sampling profiler that captures CPU, heap and native allocations, contention and hardware/software counters. Downloads are available from the Corretto home page or via Apt, Yum and Apk repositories, and contributors can provide feedback on the Corretto GitHub.

Amazon SES adds IP observability for DIP-M pools capability

📬 Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) now exposes the exact IP addresses used by Dedicated IP Addresses - Managed (DIP-M) pools. Customers can view these IPs via the console, CLI, or SES API and access Microsoft SNDS metrics for each address. SES also creates CloudWatch metrics for SNDS data to aid reputation monitoring. This gives customers greater transparency into sending activity and helps diagnose deliverability and reputation issues with mailbox providers.

Google abandons Privacy Sandbox, ends most cookie efforts

🍪 Google has announced it is discontinuing 11 Privacy Sandbox technologies — effectively ending most of the company’s cookie‑replacement efforts after evaluating low adoption and ecosystem feedback. The decision follows regulatory scrutiny from the UK’s Competition and Market Authority and several U.S. antitrust actions, and came after prior concessions from Google. The company says it will continue to work on privacy improvements for Chrome, Android and the web but will move away from the Privacy Sandbox branding.

Fortinet Publishes First EPD for FortiGate-40F NGFW

🌱 Fortinet has published the industry’s first Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for the FortiGate-40F Next-Generation Firewall, verified under the new PCR 2024:06. The EPD is based on an independent Life Cycle Assessment and discloses lifecycle impacts—carbon, energy, water, materials, and waste—providing procurement teams with standardized, third-party-validated data. Fortinet views this as an initial step and plans to extend EPD coverage across additional models to support compliance, decarbonization, and sustainable procurement.

Microsoft fixes bug blocking classic Outlook startup

🛠️ Microsoft has implemented a fix for a major issue that prevented some Microsoft 365 customers from launching the classic Outlook client on Windows. Affected users reported errors indicating the app could not be started, the Outlook window would not open, or Exchange sign-in failed. Microsoft marked the incident as fixed and said the Outlook team is monitoring the rollout, while recommending Outlook Web Access or the new Outlook for Windows as temporary workarounds.

Amazon EC2 U7i-6TB High Memory Instances in London

🚀 AWS has launched the U7i-6tb High Memory instance in the Europe (London) Region, offering 6TB of DDR5 memory and 448 vCPUs for large in-memory workloads. Powered by custom fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) processors, these 7th-generation instances support up to 100 Gbps for EBS and network and include ENA Express for lower latency. They are aimed at mission-critical in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server, enabling higher transaction throughput and faster data loading and backups.

Amazon Nova adds customizable content moderation settings

🔒 Amazon announced that Amazon Nova models now support customizable content moderation settings for approved business use cases that require processing or generating sensitive content. Organizations can adjust controls across four domains—safety, sensitive content, fairness, and security—while Amazon enforces essential, non-configurable safeguards to protect children and preserve privacy. Customization is available for Amazon Nova Lite and Amazon Nova Pro in the US East (N. Virginia) region; customers should contact their AWS Account Manager to confirm eligibility.

Amazon Connect Adds Automated Triggered Evaluations

🔔 Amazon Connect can now automatically initiate follow-up evaluations when specific conditions are detected during initial Contact Lens reviews. For example, if the first evaluation surfaces customer interest in a product, Connect can trigger a targeted follow-up focused on the agent's sales performance. Managers gain consistent standards across cohorts and capture deeper insights into sales opportunities, escalations, and other critical interaction moments. The capability is available in all regions where Amazon Connect is offered.

CloudWatch Database Insights: On-Demand Analysis for RDS

📊 Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights now offers on-demand analysis for RDS for SQL Server, extending automated diagnostics to that engine. The feature uses machine learning to compare a selected time period against baseline performance, surface anomalies, and provide tailored remediation advice. Administrators can enable this in Advanced mode via the RDS console, APIs, SDKs, or CloudFormation to reduce mean-time-to-diagnosis from hours to minutes.

Amazon Bedrock Data Automation Adds Video, Faster Images

🎞️ Amazon Bedrock Data Automation now supports AVI, MKV, and WEBM video formats and the AV1 and MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2) codecs, expanding coverage for archival, multi-track, and web-based videos. The service also delivers up to 50% faster image processing to accelerate extraction of visual insights. BDA is available in eight AWS Regions, enabling organizations to process native formats and streamline GenAI workflows.

CrowdStrike Launches AI-Driven Falcon UX in Preview

🔍 At Fal.Con 2025, CrowdStrike introduced a dynamic, persona-aware user experience for Falcon Cloud Security and Falcon Exposure Management, now available in public preview. Built on CrowdStrike Enterprise Graph and Charlotte AI, the console unifies hybrid and multi-cloud asset and risk visibility into customizable workspaces. It offers AI-assisted dashboard creation and executive-ready reporting to accelerate investigations and remediation without switching tools.

DNS0.EU DNS Service Shuts Down Over Sustainability Concerns

🔒 The DNS0.EU non‑profit public DNS resolver announced an immediate shutdown, citing unsustainable time and resource constraints for its volunteer team. Launched in 2023 and operated from France with 62 servers across 27 cities in all EU member states, the service supported no‑logs policies and modern encrypted transports including DNS‑over‑HTTPS, DNS‑over‑TLS, and DNS‑over‑QUIC. The operators thanked partners and urged users to migrate to DNS4EU or NextDNS, both of which offer privacy protections and defenses against malicious domains.

Amazon ECS Adds CloudTrail Data Events for Agent API

🔍 Amazon ECS now emits AWS CloudTrail data events for ECS Agent API activities, giving teams detailed visibility into container instance operations. Customers can opt in to the new data event resource type AWS::ECS::ContainerInstance to capture actions such as ecs:Poll, ecs:StartTelemetrySession, and ecs:PutSystemLogEvents. The capability is available for ECS on EC2 across all AWS Regions and for ECS Managed Instances in select regions. Standard CloudTrail data event charges apply.

G4 VMs: High-performance P2P Fabric for Multi‑GPU Workloads

🚀 Google Cloud's newly GA G4 VMs combine NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs with a custom, software-defined PCIe fabric to enable high-performance peer-to-peer (P2P) GPU communication. The platform accelerates collective operations like All-Gather and All-Reduce without code changes, delivering up to 2.2x faster collectives. For tensor-parallel inference, customers can see up to 168% higher throughput and up to 41% lower inter-token latency. G4 integrates with GKE Inference Gateway for horizontal scaling and production deployments.

Google Cloud G4 VMs: NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GA

🚀 The G4 VM is now generally available on Google Cloud, powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs and offering up to 768 GB of GDDR7 memory per instance class. It targets latency-sensitive and regulated workloads for generative AI, real-time rendering, simulation, and virtual workstations. Features include FP4 precision support, Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) partitioning, an enhanced PCIe P2P interconnect for faster multi‑GPU All-Reduce, and an NVIDIA Omniverse VMI on Marketplace for industrial digital twins.

Migration to Azure SQL Drives Operational and AI Gains

🚀 This Microsoft case study showcases how three organizations—Thomson Reuters, Hexure, and CallRevu—jumpstarted modernization by migrating on-premises SQL workloads to Azure SQL Managed Instance and complementary Azure services. The migrations reduced operational overhead, improved resiliency, and enabled faster deployments. Customers reported dramatic performance improvements, shorter migration windows, and a scalable foundation for AI-driven features and insights.

AI Hypercomputer Update: vLLM on TPUs and Tooling Advances

🔧 Google Cloud’s Q3 AI Hypercomputer update highlights inference improvements and expanded tooling to accelerate model serving and diagnostics. The release integrates vLLM with Cloud TPUs via the new tpu-inference plugin, unifying JAX and PyTorch runtimes and boosting TPU inference for models such as Gemma, Llama, and Qwen. Additional launches include improved XProf profiling and Cloud Diagnostics XProf, an AI inference recipe for NVIDIA Dynamo, NVIDIA NeMo RL recipes, and GA of the GKE Inference Gateway and Quickstart to help optimize latency and cost.