All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Amazon Bedrock automatically enables serverless models

🔓 Amazon Bedrock now automatically enables access to all serverless foundation models by default in all commercial AWS regions. This removes the prior manual activation step and lets users immediately use models via the Amazon Bedrock console, AWS SDK, and features such as Agents, Flows, and Prompt Management. Anthropic models remain enabled but require a one-time usage form before first use; completing the form via the console or API and submitting it from an AWS organization management account will enable Anthropic across member accounts. Administrators continue to control access through IAM policies and Service Control Policies (SCPs).

Google expands protections and tools to combat scams

🔒 Google is rolling out multiple new features to reduce scams across its services, including link warnings and navigation blocking in Google Messages when messages are flagged as spam. A Key Verifier QR option helps confirm end-to-end encrypted contacts on Android, while expanded recovery options — including Recovery Contacts and Sign in with Mobile Number — aim to simplify secure account recovery. Google also launched educational tools and partnerships to raise scam awareness.

Google introduces Recovery Contacts to aid account recovery

🔒 Google is introducing Recovery Contacts, a new account-recovery option that lets you designate trusted friends or family to help regain access if you lose a password or device. When you request help, you share a one-time verification code with your chosen contact; they receive an email or notification and confirm the code to verify it’s really you. Your recovery contact will not have access to your account or personal data. The feature complements passkeys and existing recovery tools and is rolling out now.

Amazon EC2 R8g Instances Now Available in Three Regions

🚀 Amazon EC2 R8g instances powered by AWS Graviton4 are now available in São Paulo (South America), London (Europe), and Melbourne (Asia Pacific). These memory-optimized instances deliver up to 30% better performance versus Graviton3-based R7g instances and are suited for databases, in-memory caches, and real-time big data analytics. Built on the AWS Nitro System, R8g offers enhanced performance and security with larger sizes (up to 48xlarge and 1.5 TB RAM), up to 50 Gbps networking, and up to 40 Gbps EBS bandwidth.

Amazon ECS: Run Firelens Logging Containers Non-Root

🔒 Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) now lets you run Firelens containers as a non-root user by specifying a numeric user ID in the user field of your Task Definition. Running Firelens as non-root reduces the potential attack surface and helps meet security and compliance requirements, including checks surfaced by AWS Security Hub. This capability replaces the previous default of "user": "0" and is available in all AWS Regions. See the Firelens documentation for configuration details.

Apple Raises Top Bug Bounty to $2M for Zero-Click Exploits

🔒 Apple has expanded its Security Bounty program, doubling the top award to $2,000,000 for exploit chains that achieve goals comparable to sophisticated mercenary spyware. The company says bonuses for Lockdown Mode bypasses and vulnerabilities found in beta software can push payouts past $5 million. New, higher rewards include $100,000 for a complete Gatekeeper bypass, $1,000,000 for broad unauthorized iCloud access, up to $300,000 for one-click WebKit sandbox escapes, and up to $1,000,000 for wireless proximity exploits. Apple is also introducing Target Flags, a mechanism that lets researchers demonstrate exploitability and qualify for accelerated awards processed immediately after verification, even before a fix is released.

Google Workspace adds AI ransomware detection for Drive

🛡️ Google is adding an AI-powered defense in Google Workspace that monitors files synced by the Drive for desktop app on Windows and macOS, detecting mass file corruption characteristic of ransomware. Trained on millions of ransomware samples and using intelligence from VirusTotal, the model halts cloud sync to stop spread and enables simple file restoration. The feature rolls out now at no extra cost for most commercial plans and complements built-in Gmail and Chrome protections.

AWS Backup Adds Detailed Job and Audit Report Fields

🔍 AWS Backup now returns more detailed metadata in job APIs and Backup Audit Manager reports to improve visibility into backup configuration and compliance. New fields in backup, copy, and restore job APIs expose retention settings, vault lock and type, encryption details, plan and rule names, schedules, and vault access policies. Delegated administrators can view job details across an organization. These fields are available today in supported Regions at no extra charge.

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams Adds FIS API Error Actions

🧪 Amazon Kinesis Data Streams now integrates with AWS Fault Injection Service (FIS) to simulate Kinesis API errors and validate application error handling, retry logic, and monitoring. Customers can induce throttling, internal errors, service unavailable, and expired iterator exceptions—covering 500, 503, and 400 responses for GET and PUT operations—to test resilience and CloudWatch alarms. FIS experiments support templates, CI integration, and automatic stop thresholds to keep tests controlled, and are generally available in all Regions where FIS is offered, including AWS GovCloud (US).

Amazon MSK Adds Apache Kafka 4.1 with Queues Preview

📣 Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) now supports Apache Kafka 4.1, introducing Queues as a preview feature, a new Streams Rebalance Protocol in early access, and Eligible Leader Replicas (ELR) enabled by default. These features target improved parallelism, optimized Kafka Streams task rebalancing, and stronger availability. To adopt 4.1, select 4.1.x when creating a cluster or perform an in-place rolling update; MSK orchestrates broker restarts to maintain availability. Kafka 4.1 support is available today across all AWS regions where MSK is offered.

ALB Now Supports URL and Host Header Rewrite Across Regions

🔁 With the new URL and Host Header rewrite capability for Application Load Balancer, AWS lets customers modify request URLs and Host headers using regex-based pattern matching before routing to targets. You can rewrite paths (for example, transform "/api/v1/users" to "/users"), standardize URL patterns, remove or add path prefixes, and modify the Host header for internal service routing. Configurable via the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, SDKs, and APIs, the feature incurs no extra charge beyond ALB usage and is available in all AWS commercial regions.

Amazon RDS MySQL and PostgreSQL Zero-ETL to Redshift

⚡Amazon RDS for MySQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now support zero-ETL integrations with Amazon Redshift in eight additional regions. Data written to RDS is replicated to Redshift within seconds, enabling near real-time analytics and ML on transactional datasets. You can create multiple integrations per database, apply per-integration filtering to include or exclude specific databases and tables, and automate deployment with AWS CloudFormation.

Amazon RDS for Oracle Zero-ETL Integration in 8 Regions

⚡ Amazon RDS for Oracle now offers zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift in eight additional AWS Regions, enabling near real-time analytics and ML on transactional data without building ETL pipelines. Data written to an RDS for Oracle instance is replicated to Redshift within seconds. Administrators can configure integrations via Console, API, CLI, or CloudFormation, select specific PDBs and tables, and must use Oracle Database 19c.

CrowdStrike Adds Automated ChromeOS Response, GovCloud

🔒 CrowdStrike has enhanced Falcon Insight for ChromeOS with automated device response actions and GovCloud availability. The update enables instant device disabling and placement into restricted organizational units to block further activity and reduce lateral movement. Response actions can be executed manually from the Falcon console via a prebuilt Falcon Foundry app or automated through Falcon Fusion SOAR workflows. These capabilities ingest native ChromeOS telemetry without extra agents to simplify detection and containment.

Scaling Customer Experience with AI on Google Cloud

🤖 LiveX AI outlines a Google Cloud blueprint to scale conversational customer experiences across chat, voice, and avatar interfaces. The post details how Cloud Run hosts elastic front-end microservices while GKE provides GPU-backed AI inference, and how AgentFlow orchestrates conversational state, knowledge retrieval, and human escalation. Reported customer outcomes include a >90% self-service rate for Wyze and a 3× conversion uplift for Pictory. The design emphasizes cost efficiency, sub-second latency, multilingual support, and secure integrations with platforms such as Stripe, Zendesk, and Salesforce.

Cloudflare addresses Workers CPU benchmark disparities

🔍 Cloudflare investigated an independent October benchmark comparing server-side JavaScript performance between Cloudflare Workers and Vercel, which initially showed Workers up to 3.5x slower. The company found multiple causes — scheduling heuristics, outdated V8 garbage-collector tuning, and framework-level inefficiencies in OpenNext/Next.js — and implemented fixes. Most changes are live and yield parity with Vercel across nearly all tested cases, with further work planned to close the remaining Next.js gap.

Apigee Named a Leader in Gartner's 2025 API Magic Quadrant

🏆 Google Cloud's Apigee has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for API Management and was positioned highest for Ability to Execute. The announcement highlights Apigee's expansion to support generative and agentic AI workloads by acting as an intelligent, secure API proxy that improves governance, security, scalability, and cost control. Key capabilities called out include AI productization, agent-ready API specification boosting (Private Preview), native quota-based token controls and Looker Studio reporting, a centralized API hub with Gemini-driven semantic search, and enhanced security policies including Model Armor and Advanced API Security.

Microsoft: Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 End of Support

⚠️ Microsoft notified administrators that Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, and will no longer receive security patches or time zone updates after the October 2025 security releases. The company strongly advises migrating to Exchange Online or upgrading to Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE). In-place upgrades from Exchange 2019 to SE follow the same process as installing a Cumulative Update. Customers still on Exchange 2016 or 2013 should upgrade to SE or first move to Exchange 2019.

Microsoft and Oracle Expand Oracle Database@Azure Reach

🚀 Microsoft and Oracle have expanded Oracle Database@Azure with broader regional coverage and support for Oracle Database 19c and 23ai, plus full support for Base Database, Exadata (Dedicated and Exascale), and Autonomous Database. The update introduces continuous zero-ETL mirroring into OneLake via Oracle GoldenGate and native integrations with Microsoft Fabric, enabling real-time analytics with Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, and Power BI. Security and operational management are strengthened through Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, Entra ID, and Azure Arc, while Azure Accelerate for Oracle and marketplace programs streamline migrations and partner engagement.

IBM Spectrum Symphony HostFactory Connectors for GCP

🚀 Google Cloud announces the general availability of open-source IBM Spectrum Symphony HostFactory connectors for Google Compute Engine and GKE. The connectors enable organizations to extend on‑premises Symphony clusters into Google Cloud or deploy fully cloud-native clusters with automatic provisioning and decommissioning to match workload demand. Partner-built by Accenture and validated by Aneo, the connectors support enterprise features such as Spot and on‑demand VMs, GPUs, Local SSD, Confidential VMs, Pub/Sub event-driven management, Kubernetes CRDs, and integration with managed instance group (MIG) APIs for large-scale HPC operations.