All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Amazon RDS supports cross-Region and cross-account snapshots

🔁 Amazon RDS now supports single-step cross-Region and cross-account copying of snapshots for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora. This new capability eliminates the prior two-step process and removes the need for an intermediate snapshot, helping customers achieve tighter recovery point objectives while reducing storage and operational costs. The feature is available in all AWS Regions, including AWS China and AWS GovCloud (US), and can be used today via the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs.

Amazon Nova Act IDE Extension for Agent Development and Testing

🤖 Amazon Web Services announced the Nova Act extension, embedding the agent development workflow directly into popular IDEs such as Visual Studio Code, Kiro, and Cursor. The extension unifies natural-language script creation, fine-grained scripting controls, and integrated browser testing into a single interface, reducing context switching across tools. Built on the Nova Act SDK (research preview since March 2025), the extension is available today from IDE extension marketplaces and the project’s GitHub repository includes documentation and examples to get started.

Amazon Connect: Custom Attributes for Interaction Segments

📞 Amazon Connect now lets administrators associate custom, predefined attributes with individual interaction segments. Attributes such as business unit, account type, or contact reason can be centrally managed and applied through contact flows or the UpdateContact API, ensuring each segment retains accurate business context during transfers and multi-party interactions. For example, engagements that start in Support and move to Sales keep distinct business unit names per segment. This capability strengthens reporting and analytics across the customer journey and is available in all AWS regions.

Amazon EC2 R8gb: EBS-optimized Graviton4 instances

🚀 Amazon EC2 R8gb instances are now generally available as EBS-optimized compute powered by AWS Graviton4. AWS reports up to 30% better compute performance versus Graviton3 and up to 150 Gbps of EBS bandwidth, delivering higher block storage throughput than same-sized Graviton4 counterparts. Sizes scale to 24xlarge (including a metal option) with up to 768 GiB memory and 200 Gbps networking; select large sizes support EFA. Initially available in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon).

AWS Launches EC2 Instance Attestation for Trusted Instances

🔒 AWS announced general availability of EC2 instance attestation in September 2025, enabling customers to cryptographically verify that only trusted software and configurations run on EC2 instances, including those with AI chips and GPUs. The feature uses NitroTPM and Attestable AMIs to create and compare cryptographic measurements of AMI contents. It integrates with AWS KMS so key operations can be restricted to instances that pass attestation. EC2 instance attestation is available in all AWS Commercial Regions, including AWS GovCloud (US).

AWS IAM Identity Center Adds Customer-Managed KMS Keys

🔐 IAM Identity Center now supports customer-managed AWS KMS keys to encrypt workforce identity data, including user and group attributes. While AWS-owned keys remain the default, a customer-managed key (CMK) lets organizations control key lifecycle, policies, and usage permissions for stronger security and compliance. CMKs can be set when enabling a new organization instance or added to existing ones, and their usage is auditable via AWS CloudTrail. Support is available for access to accounts and select AWS applications across all IAM Identity Center regions; standard KMS charges apply.

Amazon Redshift Serverless Now Available in Taipei

🚀 Amazon Redshift Serverless is now generally available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) region, enabling analysts, developers, and data scientists to run and scale analytics without provisioning or managing clusters. The service automatically provisions and intelligently scales compute, with per-second billing for workload duration. Users can query data via Query Editor V2 or existing BI tools, load data from Amazon S3, restore snapshots, and directly query open formats like Apache Parquet, while benefiting from unified billing across data sources.

Automating Security Hub Exceptions with Business Context

🔒 This post describes an automated approach to validate and document exceptions to AWS Security Hub findings, enabling security teams to enforce governance while developers request and implement compensating controls. The solution leverages EventBridge, SQS, Lambda, and DynamoDB to validate controls, collect evidence, and maintain an immutable audit trail. It preserves segregation of duties, supports multiple validation types, and includes deployment scripts and CloudFormation templates. The authors emphasize the reference architecture is a starting point and must be reviewed and adapted before production use.

Amazon Connect Contact Lens Adds Redaction in 7 Languages

🔒 Amazon Connect Contact Lens now provides automatic sensitive data redaction for voice and chat conversational analytics in French (France, Canada), Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil), Italian, German, and Spanish (Spain). You can remove PII, financial account numbers and PINs, and Internet access details from transcripts and audio files, choosing to redact selected entities or all detected sensitive data. Redacted values can be replaced with a generic placeholder (e.g., [PII]) or an entity-specific placeholder (e.g., [NAME]). Sensitive data redaction is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect is offered.

Microsoft Removes Windows 11 24H2 Safeguard Hold After Fix

🔧 Microsoft removed a compatibility hold that prevented devices with integrated cameras from installing Windows 11, version 24H2 after fixing a face/object detection bug that could cause the Camera app, Windows Hello facial sign-in, and other camera-using apps to freeze. The safeguard (ID 53340062) has been lifted; eligible devices with no other holds should be offered the update via Windows Update within 48 hours, and restarting may speed the offer. Microsoft recommends installing the latest security update, which includes the fix.

Amazon Connect Flow Designer: New Analytics Mode Now

📊 Amazon Connect's Flow Designer now includes an analytics mode that surfaces aggregate metrics across drag-and-drop flows to help teams build and optimize customer journeys. You can visualize step-level behavior, including where users abandon, encounter errors, or are transferred to agent queues, enabling targeted troubleshooting and configuration fixes. This capability is included with Amazon Connect (with unlimited AI) pricing and is available in all AWS regions.

Mozilla lets Firefox add-on developers roll back updates

🔁 Mozilla now allows Firefox extension developers to roll back recently approved versions to a previously approved release, enabling fast mitigation of critical bugs and regressions. When reverted, users cannot install the problematic version, and browsers with automatic updates will revert affected installations within 24 hours. Developers can republish a prior build via the Developer Hub or the Add-on Submission API. Rollbacks require at least two approved versions on addons.mozilla.org, while self-distributed extensions may revert to any approved version.

Cloudflare Workers Launchpad Cohort #6 and Program Update

🚀 Cloudflare’s Workers Launchpad helps startups build and scale by providing cloud credits, technical mentorship, and direct access to product teams. Since expanding to a $2B funding commitment, the program has supported 145 startups across 23 countries, spanning AI, developer tools, and infrastructure. Cohort #6 introduces a new slate of founders and emphasizes hands-on collaboration, community, and pathways to funding and acquisition.

Cloudflare launches office hubs for startups in 2026

🚀 Cloudflare will open select office locations as free coworking hubs for early-stage companies beginning January 2026. The pilot will allow a capped number of external visitors on select days in San Francisco, Austin, London, and Lisbon, with registration coordinated through the Cloudflare for Startups program. Visitors will have access to common spaces at no cost, with simple ground rules and cohort-based scheduling—no mandatory talks or obligations.

Cloudflare Backs Ladybird Browser and Omarchy Linux

🌐 Cloudflare announced sponsorships for two independent open-source projects: Ladybird, a browser built from scratch with new LibWeb and LibJS engines, and Omarchy, an opinionated Arch Linux setup for developers. The company frames its contributions as unconditional, aimed at preserving diversity, privacy, security, and performance across client and developer tooling. Both projects are early-stage, invite community contributions, and may influence broader web platform standards and developer workflows.

Major EDR Vendors Withdraw from MITRE ATT&CK Tests

🔍Three major cybersecurity vendors — Microsoft, SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks — have declined to participate in the 2025 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations: Enterprise, citing a need to prioritize product development and innovation. Their exits, after strong 2024 performances, have sparked debate over the tests' scope and whether they encourage PR-driven preparation. MITRE says it will revive a vendor forum for 2026 to improve engagement.

Cloudflare Expands Intern Program to Hire 1,111 in 2026

🚀Cloudflare will hire up to 1,111 interns in 2026 across global hub offices to accelerate the creative application of AI and broaden its talent pipeline. Interns will be embedded on cross-functional teams—from engineering and product to marketing, legal, and finance—and are expected to deliver concrete, customer-facing work. Positions are paid, typically 12 weeks in length, with hybrid in-office attendance and dedicated mentors. Software engineering applicants can be fast-tracked by submitting an AI-powered project built on Cloudflare.

Cap'n Web: Lightweight TypeScript RPC for Web Applications

🔧 Cap'n Web is a compact, open-source RPC protocol and TypeScript implementation designed for the modern web stack. It provides an object-capability model with bidirectional calls, function and object references, and promise pipelining while using human-readable JSON for transport. The library runs in browsers, Node.js, and Cloudflare Workers, ships as a sub-10KB minified bundle, and integrates with TypeScript tooling. It's experimental but already used inside Cloudflare and released under the MIT license.

Cloudflare Launches Free Developer Tools for Students

🚀 Cloudflare is offering 12 months of its paid Developer features free to eligible US students with a verified .edu billing email. The program expands usage allotments for Workers, Pages Functions, KV, Durable Objects, Hyperdrive, Workers Logpush, and Queues so students can build APIs, full‑stack apps, and data pipelines without immediate cost. Eligible accounts also gain access to a dedicated student Discord community and clear redemption steps for new and existing .edu accounts.

Cloudflare Offers Startup Credits to Nonprofits Globally

🚀 Cloudflare has opened its Startup program to registered non-profit, civil society, and public interest organizations, offering up to $250,000 in credits to support developer and core services. Eligible groups can use credits for databases & storage, compute, AI, media, and performance and security tools. Applications are open now through December 1, 2025; awards will be made based on project description, technical needs, and expected impact. Applicants must be a registered 501(c)(3) or equivalent and describe the tool they plan to build or scale.