All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔒 AWS reintroduces explicit forward proxy functionality within Network Firewall, allowing customers to use existing firewall policies across both proxy and transparent modes. The feature supports managed rule groups, active threat defense, Geo-IP, URL/category filtering, and container attribute rules for Amazon EKS and ECS. Available in a no-source-preservation deployment during public preview in US East (Ohio), the preview is free and intended for testing and validation.

🛠️ Amazon Connect Customer now allows agents to export cases to CSV directly from the agent workspace. Agents can filter and select cases and choose which case fields to include, while admins manage export access via a security profile permission. The feature is available across multiple AWS regions including US, Canada, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa.

🔎 Amazon Web Search on Amazon Bedrock is now generally available, providing a built-in server-side web search tool that enables OpenAI models to ground responses with current web knowledge while keeping data residency inside AWS and ensuring zero data egress. The feature eliminates the need for third-party search vendors, extra API keys, orchestration, and vendor security reviews by integrating via a single parameter in the existing API call and returning semantic snippets with citations.

🚀 Amazon EMR on EC2 now supports interactive Apache Spark sessions via Spark Connect, enabling data engineers and scientists to develop and debug Spark applications from managed notebooks in Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio or from IDEs like Jupyter and VS Code. Each interactive session runs on a dedicated EMR on EC2 cluster, and users can monitor and debug active and completed sessions through the EMR console. The feature offers persistent Spark contexts across cells, a client-server architecture that decouples clients from the Spark driver, and real-time observability through the Spark UI and History Server.

🔒 The AWS Security Hub Extended plan now adds Supply Chain Security as its 10th category, integrating curated partners Chainguard and Socket. This enables detection and blocking of malicious dependencies before they reach builds and maintains streamlined activation with pay-as-you-go pricing. The Extended plan now includes 23 curated partner solutions, all billed on a single AWS invoice with no long-term commitments.

🚀 Amazon EC2 C8g instances, powered by AWS Graviton4 processors, are now available in AWS Europe (Paris), AWS Africa (Cape Town), AWS Israel (Tel Aviv), and AWS Canada West (Calgary). These compute-optimized instances deliver up to 30% better performance than Graviton3-based instances and are built on the AWS Nitro System to improve performance and security. C8g offers 12 sizes, including bare metal, enhanced networking up to 50 Gbps, and up to 40 Gbps EBS bandwidth for compute-intensive workloads.

🔒 Microsoft expands its Zero Trust for AI strategy with an automated Zero Trust Assessment and a new DevSecOps pillar in the Zero Trust Workshop to help organizations secure AI agents, developer workflows, and CI/CD pipelines. The Assessment evaluates tenant configuration and activity across Identity, Devices, Network, Data, AI, Security Operations, and Infrastructure, producing prioritized recommendations and executive-ready reports. The DevSecOps pillar maps Zero Trust principles into 15 control groups and 91 tasks covering source code, pipelines, dependencies, artifacts, and infrastructure-as-code. Together, the Assessment and Workshop convert findings into a phased 12–24 month remediation roadmap.

🔐 AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Network Load Balancer (NLB) now support TLS security policies aligned to RFC 9151 to meet Commercial National Security Algorithm (CNSA) 1.0 requirements. These policies implement NSA-defined cryptographic controls for TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3. Customers can apply RFC 9151-compliant or broader interoperability policies to minimize disruption during client transitions. The feature is available across all AWS Commercial, GovCloud (US), and China regions at no extra cost.

🟦 Amazon S3 Vectors is now available in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (Germany) Region. Amazon S3 Vectors is purpose-built vector storage for AI agents, inference, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and semantic search at billion-vector scale. It offers the elasticity, durability, and availability of Amazon S3 with dedicated APIs to store, access, and query vectors without provisioning infrastructure.

🚨 Microsoft Defender’s attack disruption now includes device isolation, an automated response that isolates compromised endpoints. At QNET, Defender detected a multi-stage attack using mshta.exe and enforced isolation within 128 seconds, blocking a second-stage payload and preventing persistence or lateral movement. This action is AI-driven, time-limited, operator-controlled, and designed to work with user containment to reduce risk and speed SOC response.

🔒 Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces renewal of its Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) and Three Domain Secure (3DS) certifications, adding three AWS services and one AWS Region to the compliance scope. The certification enables customers to use the newly scoped services while maintaining PCI DSS and PCI 3DS compliance. AWS engaged Coalfire as the third-party Qualified Security Assessor (QSA). Customers can retrieve report packages from AWS Artifact to streamline audits and reduce compliance overhead.

📈 Amazon Connect Customer now supports generating capacity plans at 15- or 30-minute intervals, offering workforce planners finer visibility into staffing needs across Voice, Chat, Task, and Email channels. Interval-level plans reflect intra-day demand shifts — such as lunchtime chat surges or end-of-day call changes — enabling precise alignment of agent capacity with real-time demand. Planners can also set shrinkage assumptions and available headcount per interval for greater accuracy, reducing over- and under-staffing and improving service levels and efficiency.

🔒 Airlock Digital announced Agentic AI Control & Governance at Black Hat USA 2026, extending its preventative endpoint security to provide command- and session-level visibility into trusted AI agent behavior. The offering adds centralized policy management for trusted applications and AI agents, real-time evaluation of agent commands against policy, and dashboard-based monitoring of sessions, files, tokens, and risk. Customer general availability is expected in Q3 2026.

🔁 This article explains how Google Cloud's Database Migration Service (DMS) automates translating SQL Server stored procedures that return multiple result sets into PostgreSQL equivalents. It outlines the decision matrix that maps simple single-result procedures to PROCEDURE objects and complex multi-result or mixed-return routines to FUNCTIONs returning SETOF refcursor, and describes the testing and application integration changes required.

🤖 Google Cloud announced two AI-powered database agents — the Database Onboarding Agent for Day 0 setup and the Database Observability Agent for Day 1/2 monitoring and remediation — introduced as part of the Agentic Data Cloud at Google Cloud Next ‘26. These always-on agents integrate with Chat, CLI, the Cloud console, MCP servers, and IDEs to automate provisioning, configuration, telemetry correlation, root-cause analysis, and validated remediations. The Observability Agent leverages Gemini and multiple telemetry sources to surface fleet-level insights, in-product investigations, and actionable fixes, while the Onboarding Agent recommends appropriate database types and configurations based on application requirements. Supported services include AlloyDB, Bigtable, Cloud SQL, Firestore, Memorystore, and Spanner, and capabilities are available via Gemini Cloud Assist and select previews.

🧩 Deutsche Bank adopted Google Cloud's Apigee to transform monolithic systems into a governed, scalable API ecosystem. The platform centralizes documentation, security policies, and governance while enabling discoverability and reuse across teams. Apigee enforces least-privilege access, rate limiting, and observability, and supports resilience, auto-scaling, and caching for high performance. This API-first foundation positions the bank for AI-ready, low-latency services and emerging standards.

🔧 Amazon announces general availability of Amazon EC2 Storage Optimized I8g instances in AWS Europe (Paris) and Asia Pacific (Jakarta). Powered by AWS Graviton4, I8g delivers leading compute for storage-intensive workloads using third-generation AWS Nitro SSDs that improve storage throughput and reduce latency versus I4g. Built on the AWS Nitro System, these instances offer enhanced performance and security for I/O-intensive databases, analytics, and AI preprocessing.

🔒 PAN-OS 12.2 Ceres introduces Advanced Virtual Patching, Advanced IP Defense, and AI-powered Network Security Agents to confront Frontier AI–driven threats, surging traffic, and cryptographic upheaval. The release emphasizes near-zero exposure windows by using AI to discover vulnerabilities and deploy network-level protections instantly, while integrating with industry partners and Project Lightwell. These innovations aim to protect critical OT, healthcare, and IoT environments without downtime and to automate routine admin tasks via Strata Cloud Manager.

🔍 Cloudflare now captures OpenTelemetry traces automatically during local Worker development in Wrangler and Vite. When a supported coding agent session is detected, the development server exposes a Local Explorer API that lets agents query traces and correlated logs without installing SDKs or configuring observability. The Local Explorer also offers a browser interface to inspect spans, timing, attributes, errors, and local state for D1, KV, R2, Durable Objects, and Workflows.

🔎 Over four months, Cloudflare’s AI code reviewer flagged nearly 230,000 deviations from internal engineering standards and blocked almost 16,000 merges. The company consolidated dispersed guidance into the Cloudflare Codex, a governed RFC-based repository of SHOULD and MUST requirements that agents can consume across the engineering lifecycle. Codex-driven agents now review code, specs, and incident reports, improving consistency and surfacing issues earlier while leaving final judgment to engineers.