All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔒 The shift to Post‑Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is now a practical priority for security, architecture, procurement, and compliance teams. The White House EO sets firm federal deadlines for PQC adoption in 2030–2031 and prompts broader supply‑chain impacts, making 2026–2027 critical planning years. Organizations should inventory cryptographic dependencies, assess vendor readiness, prioritize systems vulnerable to “harvest now, decrypt later” threats, and build crypto‑agility. Fortinet tools like FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiGate hardware acceleration support discovery, risk measurement, and targeted protection to help operationalize PQC migration.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker AI Inference now supports G6 instances in AWS GovCloud (US‑East). These instances feature up to 8 NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPUs with 24 GB each and third‑generation AMD EPYC processors, offering up to 2x inference performance versus G4dn. The expansion enables government and regulated customers to deploy generative AI and computer vision endpoints while meeting compliance and data residency requirements. G6 offers competitive price‑performance for production workloads that fit within 24 GB GPU memory.

🛡️ The interview outlines a partnership between Crime Stoppers International and Fortinet to create the Cybercrime Bounty program, a secure and anonymous channel for private-sector contributors to report suspected cybercriminals. It emphasizes anonymity, Fortinet’s threat-intelligence validation, and the program’s focus on identifying human actors and networks rather than software vulnerabilities. The initiative aims to turn tips into actionable intelligence for law enforcement and strengthen public–private cooperation to disrupt cybercrime at scale.

🔧 AWS announces general availability of node lifecycle actions in AWS Parallel Computing Service (PCS), letting users run custom scripts automatically at defined points in a compute node's lifecycle. Use cases include mounting shared storage, joining directory services, installing software, or setting up monitoring. Scripts are defined in compute node group configurations, sourced from Amazon S3 or HTTPS URIs, and support arguments, lifecycle stage selection, reboot re-run options, and error-handling behavior. AWS PCS writes action output to dedicated logs for visibility and the feature is available in all Regions that support PCS.

📹 Google introduced an opt-in selfie video sign-in method to help users recover access when they cannot use their usual phone or computer. Users set up a short guided video with head movements to capture their face from multiple angles; later recordings are compared to the saved video to confirm identity. The feature stores videos encrypted at rest, is not available for Workspace, Child, or Advanced Protection accounts, and can be deleted or toggled for service improvement.

📸 Selfie video sign-in provides a new option to access your Google Account when you’re locked out or lack your usual device. Setup involves a short guided head-movement video captured and stored securely with your consent; you can delete it anytime. The system compares a fresh selfie video to the stored one and requires live movements to prevent spoofing. Encryption at rest and existing security measures are applied to protect against impersonation and suspicious sign-in attempts.

🛡️ Microsoft advises Windows administrators to apply security patches within three days, arguing that AI has accelerated vulnerability discovery and exploitation. Many enterprise teams, however, say the blanket three-day window is unrealistic given heavy testing, change control, and compatibility constraints. Experts recommend focusing rapid remediation on vulnerabilities with verified exploitation or credible proof-of-concept while using compensating controls and automation to manage broader exposure.

🗂️ AWS Wickr introduces a managed Data Retention Service for Premium customers, enabling retention of conversations across networks—including direct messages, Groups, Rooms, and federated teams—for archival and audit purposes. The serverless, cloud-native solution replaces container-based approaches with simplified deployment, managed infrastructure, automatic scaling, and monitoring while preserving Wickr's end-to-end encryption. The feature is opt-in for Premium networks and is available in multiple AWS regions including US, Canada, Asia Pacific, Europe, and AWS GovCloud.

🔔 Amazon has expanded EC2 High Memory U7i instances to additional regions, adding U7in-16TB in São Paulo and U7in-24TB in Ireland. These 7th-generation instances use custom Intel Sapphire Rapids processors and provide large DDR5 memory footprints of 16 TiB and 24 TiB respectively. Both instance sizes offer 896 vCPUs, up to 100 Gbps Amazon EBS bandwidth, 200 Gbps networking, and ENA Express, targeting in-memory databases and high-throughput transaction workloads.

🚀 Starting today, Amazon EC2 C7a instances are available in AWS US West (N. California). Powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC (Genoa) processors with up to 3.7 GHz, C7a delivers up to 50% higher performance than C6a and introduces AVX-512, VNNI, and bfloat16 support. These instances use DDR5 memory with 2.25x more memory bandwidth and come in 12 sizes including bare metal, plus support for up to 128 EBS volumes. Built on the AWS Nitro System, C7a is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and is available via On-Demand, Spot, and Savings Plans.

🚀 Amazon announced general-purpose EC2 M8a instances are now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) region. Powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors, M8a offers up to 30% higher performance and up to 19% better price-performance versus M7a. Instances provide 45% more memory bandwidth, SAP certification, 12 sizes including two bare metal options, and support for Savings Plans, On-Demand, and Spot purchases.

🚀 Amazon EC2 M8id instances are now available in Europe (Ireland). Powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors, they deliver up to 43% higher compute performance and 3.3x greater memory bandwidth versus M6id. Instances scale to 384 vCPUs, 1.5 TiB memory, and 22.8 TB NVMe SSD, and provide improved I/O and analytics performance with flexible Instance Bandwidth Configuration.

🔁 Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports listener rules to route connections to different target groups based on source IP address type. A single dual-stack NLB can now preserve original client IPs by sending IPv6 traffic to IPv6 targets and IPv4 traffic to IPv4 targets without protocol translation. Rules work on TCP, UDP, TCP_UDP, and TLS listeners and integrate with existing NLB features such as connection draining and cross-zone load balancing. Listener rules are available in all AWS commercial and GovCloud (US) Regions at no additional charge; standard NLB pricing applies.

⚙️ AWS Entity Resolution now supports advanced real-time matching workflows via the existing GenerateMatchId API. Customers can enable enableRealTimeMatching to apply complex rulesets—such as Exact and ExactManyToMany with AND/OR logic—for millisecond-scale matching. This removes the previous need for separate batch processing or extra infrastructure and is available in all Regions where the service is offered.

🔔 GitHub will cut public bug bounty payments by roughly half at every severity level beginning July 27, 2026, moving from flexible ranges to fixed payouts. Critical rewards drop to $10,000 while the invite-only VIP tier will pay $30,000 or more. Reports submitted before the cutoff keep prior terms. GitHub says the change aims to reduce noise and speed responses for established researchers while retaining discretionary bonuses for exceptional work.

🔒 AWS Lambda durable functions now support encrypting durable execution data with an AWS KMS customer managed key. Durable functions let you run long-lived workflows with automatic state management; execution state is encrypted at rest by default with an AWS‑owned key. With this update you can select and manage your own KMS key for execution data, enabling separate control of rotation and access for execution history and state. The feature is available in all Regions where durable functions exist; standard AWS KMS charges apply.

🛡️ Amazon announced quarterly security and critical updates for Amazon Corretto on July 22, 2026, releasing Corretto 26.0.2, 25.0.4, 21.0.12, 17.0.20, 11.0.32, and 8u502. The Corretto distribution remains a no-cost, multi-platform production-ready build of OpenJDK. Default Docker images now use Amazon Linux 2023 while Amazon Linux 2 remains available as a non-default option. JavaFX binaries are no longer included with Corretto 8; migration guidance is provided on GitHub.

🔒 AWS Organizations now supports up to 2,000 resource control policies (RCPs) per organization, doubling the prior 1,000 limit. RCPs let administrators centrally manage maximum permissions and restrict which external principals can access resources across member accounts. The increase is available at no extra cost in all supported Regions and requires no action from existing organizations. This helps large multi-account environments implement more granular, organization-wide access controls without changing individual resource policies.

🔎 Cisco introduced the Antares family of open-weight AI models to help security teams quickly locate files likely to contain specific classes of vulnerabilities using CWE descriptions. Rather than detecting CVEs or producing patches, Antares ranks source files and provides an exploration trace to guide human reviewers. Available in 350M, 1B, and 3B parameter sizes, the models are optimized for local deployment and aimed at reducing triage workload without replacing analysts.

🔒 Microsoft and AXA XL have partnered to provide AXA XL policyholders direct access to Microsoft Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response, aligning technical, legal, and insurance workflows during incidents. The collaboration emphasizes pre-established coordination, proactive planning, and first‑party threat intelligence to accelerate containment and recovery. Together they aim to reduce friction and delays in high‑stakes cyber events.