All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 Now Available in Bedrock

🚀 Claude Haiku 4.5 is now available in Amazon Bedrock, offering near-frontier performance comparable to Claude Sonnet 4 while reducing cost and improving inference speed. The model targets latency-sensitive and budget-conscious deployments, excelling at coding, computer use, agent tasks, and vision-enabled workflows. Haiku 4.5 supports global cross-region inference and is positioned for scaled production use; consult Bedrock documentation, the console, and pricing pages for region and billing details.

AWS Backup Now Adds Schedule Preview for Backup Plans

🗓️ AWS Backup now provides a schedule preview for backup plans, displaying the next ten scheduled backup runs and showing when features such as continuous backup, indexing, or copy settings take effect. The preview consolidates all backup rules into a single timeline so you can quickly identify overlaps, gaps, or configuration conflicts. This capability is available in all AWS Regions and accessible from the AWS Backup console, API, or CLI without additional configuration.

AWS Step Functions Adds Amazon Q AI Troubleshooting Guidance

🔍 AWS has integrated Amazon Q's AI diagnostics into the AWS Step Functions console to provide context-aware troubleshooting for workflow errors. Users can click the Diagnose with Amazon Q button in error alerts and the console notification area to receive tailored remediation steps for state machine execution failures and Amazon States Language (ASL) syntax errors and warnings. Troubleshooting recommendations appear in a dedicated window showing remediation steps, analysis of relevant state, input, and logs, and suggested fixes to reduce manual investigation. The feature is automatically enabled in commercial AWS Regions where Amazon Q is available to help teams accelerate resolution and lower operational overhead.

Second-Generation AWS Outposts Racks Supported in Ireland

📡 Second-generation AWS Outposts racks are now supported in the AWS Europe (Ireland) Region, allowing customers to order racks connected to that Region. Outposts extend AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools into on-premises data centers and colocation sites for a consistent hybrid experience. This expansion helps organizations optimize latency and address data residency needs while retaining centralized management through their home Region.

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).

Amazon Bedrock expands DeepSeek, OpenAI, Qwen models

🚀 Amazon Bedrock has expanded regional access to several foundation models, adding DeepSeek-V3.1, OpenAI open-weight models (20B, 120B), and multiple Qwen3 variants. The update makes DeepSeek-V3.1 and Qwen3 Coder-480B available in US East (Ohio) and Asia Pacific (Jakarta), and brings OpenAI open-weight and additional Qwen models to US East (Ohio), Europe (Frankfurt), and Asia Pacific (Jakarta). Customers can deploy these models locally to meet data residency needs, reduce latency, and enable faster AI-powered experiences.

Aurora PostgreSQL zero-ETL now integrates SageMaker

🔁 Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition now offers zero-ETL integration with Amazon SageMaker, enabling near-real-time replication of PostgreSQL tables into a lakehouse. The synced data conforms to Apache Iceberg open standards and is immediately accessible to SQL, Apache Spark, BI, and ML tools via a simple no-code interface without impacting production workloads. Comprehensive, fine-grained access controls are enforced across analytics engines, and the capability is available in multiple AWS Regions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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).

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.