All news with #aws tag

🔔 Amazon Redshift now supports rg.large and rg.12xlarge RG instances in AWS GovCloud (US-West) and GovCloud (US-East). These RG instances run data warehouse and data lake workloads up to 2.4x faster than previous RA3 instances and offer about 30% lower price per vCPU. New sizes require patch version P202 or later and existing clusters can be resized or upgraded via Elastic Resize, Classic Resize, or Snapshot & Restore. Multiple pricing options are available including On-Demand and 1- and 3-year Reserved Instances.

🛡️ AWS GovCloud (US) now supports Claude Opus 5, the latest Opus model, with zero data retention (ZDR) enabled by default. The model is accessible via the bedrock-runtime endpoint in both GovCloud regions and via bedrock-mantle in GovCloud (US‑West). Claude Opus 5 improves coding, long-running agents, and complex document reasoning while maintaining regional data residency.

🔔 Amazon Quick has made Microsoft 365 extensions for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook generally available. These extensions let Quick operate directly inside users' M365 environments to handle complex local tasks, including document redlining, financial model building, presentation creation, and inbox management. Each extension is tailored: Excel for data analysis and cleaning, PowerPoint for template-driven decks, Word for formatted drafting and track changes, and Outlook for prioritizing, organizing, and drafting emails. The extensions are available in multiple AWS regions globally.

🔍 AWS now includes Local Zones in Spot placement score, enabling customers to identify where Spot capacity requests are most likely to succeed. The feature evaluates target capacity and compute requirements and returns scores for Regions or Availability Zones. Previously, Local Zone capacity was excluded from zonal and regional scores; inclusion is now optional and expands Spot capacity visibility. Spot placement score is available via the EC2 Spot Console, AWS CLI, and SDK.

🔒 Beacon attributes a cyber-attack to a compromised AWS access key likely exposed in public Javascript build artifacts, allowing an attacker to download CRM data belonging to about 1,500 UK charities. The incident, identified in activity starting on July 27, saw data decrypted during download despite being encrypted at rest. Beacon has reset credentials, found no evidence of persistence, and instructed customers to report the breach to the ICO. Affected charities have been notified, and there is no confirmation that stolen data has been published or misused.

🔐 AWS Certificate Manager now allows changing domain validation on existing public TLS certificates from e-mail to DNS without reissuing or changing the ARN. ACM will phase out email validation through 2027 per CA/B Forum mandates; it will stop issuing email-validated certs on March 31, 2027 and stop renewing them on September 30, 2027. Use the console or UpdateCertificateOptions API to switch and add provided CNAME records within 72 hours.

🔒 AWS Clean Rooms now supports minimum aggregation thresholds for the Custom analysis rule type, preventing queries from returning results about individuals or small groups. Data providers can enforce a minimum identity count (for example, user IDs) per output row and set higher thresholds for specific columns. The update removes the need for pre-approved templates and manual code reviews, allowing ad-hoc custom SQL while specifying which columns may be filtered or joined to protect privacy.

🔒 Administrators can now enforce approval policies in Amazon Quick to govern how assets are shared across their organization. Policies can be scoped to asset types such as knowledge bases, spaces, and custom chat agents, routing share requests to designated approver groups. Approvers can inspect assets (including full dependency packages for custom agents) and approve or deny requests, while all actions are logged to AWS CloudTrail for auditability. The capability is available on Professional and Enterprise plans in Regions that support Amazon Quick agentic features.

🔒 Amazon Quick now lets administrators set per-user limits on index storage and agent hours to control subscription costs. With limits management, admins can create limit profiles that cap individual consumption and assign them at the user, role, or account level with a priority hierarchy. When a user reaches their limit, new consumption is blocked but existing content is preserved. The feature is available for Professional and Enterprise plans in supported AWS Regions.

🗺️ AWS has added an interactive map view to AWS Global View in the AWS Management Console, enabling users to visualize AWS Regions and AWS Local Zones on a single map. Users can toggle between the new map view and the existing list view to see enabled locations and all available AWS locations at a glance. The feature is available in all public AWS Regions and can be accessed via the Regions and Zones page in the AWS Global View console.

🔔 Amazon Connect Customer now allows agents to view and self-assign queued agent-first callbacks alongside emails, tasks, and chats. This capability lets agents prioritize follow-ups or take ownership when they already have context, reducing handoffs and accelerating resolution. The feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect Customer is offered, with guidance in the product documentation and Worklist app setup materials.

🗂️ AWS Deadline Cloud now reports costs for Amazon EBS persistent volumes in the Usage Explorer within the Deadline Cloud Monitor app. This feature tracks EBS volume costs from creation to deletion independent of jobs or sessions and surfaces them as a new persistent volume usage type in the Usage Explorer and statistics APIs. Costs are attributed to the owning fleet to allow aggregation by fleet, farm, or time period, helping customers identify idle volumes and adjust time-to-live settings. Cost tracking is enabled automatically across all AWS Regions where Deadline Cloud is available and introduces no additional charges.

🔔 Amazon announced general availability of Amazon Nova Multimodal Embeddings in AWS GovCloud (US-West). The unified embedding model supports text, documents, images, video, and audio through a single model to enable cross-modal retrieval and agentic RAG. It accepts up to 8K tokens and video/audio segments up to 30 seconds, with synchronous and asynchronous API options for latency-sensitive and bulk workloads.

🛡️ Researchers from Tracebit report that embedding prompt injections alongside secrets stored on AWS can disrupt AI hacking agents by triggering LLM guardrails. These injected prompts instruct the model to perform forbidden actions, causing the LLM to shut down or stop following prior commands—a technique the researchers call context bombing. The approach succeeds only when attackers use models with built-in safety filters; locally run or unguarded models remain unaffected.

🛡️ Amazon Quick's agentic AI is now available in AWS GovCloud (US-West), bringing an AI teammate into an isolated, FedRAMP Class D (formerly High) authorized environment for government and regulated-industry teams. The service enables custom chat agents for mission workflows—such as procurement, ATO compliance, and grants management—while keeping data hosted and processed within the GovCloud region. Spaces enforce least-privilege access and Quick integrates with existing tools like Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and OneDrive via GCC High connectors.

🚀 Amazon EC2 R8a instances are now available in Canada (Central). These instances use 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors with up to 4.5 GHz and deliver up to 30% higher performance and up to 19% better price-performance versus R7a. Built on the AWS Nitro System with sixth generation Nitro Cards, R8a offers 12 sizes (including 2 bare metal) and is SAP-certified.

🔒 Landing Zone Accelerator now has an independent assessment report for C5:2020 available on AWS Artifact, evaluating how LZA's baseline implements nearly 200 native security controls. The report, prepared by AWS partner Schellman, maps LZA's Universal Configuration and security control baseline to C5:2020 technical criteria and describes architecture, best practices, and scoping considerations. LZA supports standard multi-account and container deployments in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and is accompanied by a Compliance Workbook to help customers accelerate evidence collection and assessment preparation.

🔒 Amazon Bedrock now supports cost allocation by AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) principal — including IAM users and roles — for model inference requests made through the bedrock-mantle endpoint. This extends existing support for the bedrock-runtime endpoint and enables customers to attribute inference costs to teams, projects, or applications using IAM principal tags. Activate IAM principal tags in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console to analyze costs in AWS Cost Explorer or include caller identity data in AWS Cost and Usage Report 2.0.

🔒 Amazon Web Services (AWS) has published the Summer 2026 SOC 1 report covering 185 services for the period July 1, 2025–June 30, 2026. Customers can access the report via AWS Artifact in the AWS Management Console. AWS continues to expand the set of services within its compliance programs to support customer regulatory and architectural needs. Contact your AWS account team for questions or feedback.

🔒 Amazon Web Services announces it has completed the 2025-26 NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) assessment, achieving a status of Standards Exceeded. The DSPT measures performance against the National Data Guardian’s 10 data security standards for organizations accessing NHS patient data. AWS’s assessment status is valid until June 30, 2027, and the compliance certificate is available via the NHS England website and AWS Artifact. AWS reiterates that security and compliance are a shared responsibility between the provider and the customer.