All news with #google cloud tag

October 2025 Google AI: Research, Products, and Security

📰 In October, Google highlighted AI advances across research, consumer devices and enterprise tools, from rolling out Gemini for Home and vibe coding in AI Studio to launching Gemini Enterprise for workplace AI. The month included security initiatives for Cybersecurity Awareness Month—anti‑scam protections, CodeMender and the Secure AI Framework 2.0—and developer releases like the Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model. Research milestones included a verifiable quantum advantage result and an oncology-focused model, Cell2Sentence-Scale, aimed at accelerating cancer therapy discovery.

Identity Failures Now Top Source of Cloud Risk in 2025

🔒 ReliaQuest's Q3 2025 telemetry found identity-related weaknesses were responsible for 44% of true‑positive cloud alerts, including excessive permissions, misconfigured roles and credential abuse. The report warns credentials and cloud keys often appear on crime markets — sometimes for as little as $2 — while 99% of cloud identities are reportedly over‑privileged, enabling stealthy access. It also highlights how rapid DevOps deployments can replicate legacy vulnerabilities and urges adoption of short‑lived credentials, strict least‑privilege controls and CI/CD security automation.

BigQuery's Data Engineering Agent: Automating Pipelines

🔧 The preview of the Data Engineering Agent in BigQuery introduces a Gemini-powered assistant that automates pipeline development, maintenance, and migrations. The agent converts natural-language requirements into SQL, enforces engineering best practices, and supports custom instructions and UDFs to reflect organizational logic. Integrated with Dataplex, it uses governance metadata to improve table descriptions, data quality assertions, and PII-aware handling, and it also generates documentation and troubleshooting guidance. The feature is available in preview via BigQuery Pipelines and the Dataform UI.

How Scientists Can Use Gemini Enterprise for AI Workflows

🔬 Google Cloud presents how researchers can accelerate scientific workflows by combining Gemini Enterprise with integrated HPC infrastructure. It showcases AI agents—like the Deep Research agent for literature synthesis and the Idea Generation agent for proposing and ranking hypotheses—alongside developer tooling such as Gemini Code Assist and Gemini CLI for code, debugging, and workflow automation. The platform pairs these capabilities with purpose-built VMs (H4D, A4, A4X) and Google Cloud Managed Lustre to scale simulations and analysis.

Ray on TPUs with GKE: Native, Lower-Friction Integration

🚀 Google Cloud and Anyscale have enhanced the Ray experience on Cloud TPUs with GKE to reduce setup complexity and improve performance. The new ray.util.tpu library and a SlicePlacementGroup with a label_selector API automatically reserve co-located TPU slices and preserve SPMD topology to avoid resource fragmentation. Ray Train and Ray Serve gain expanded TPU support including alpha JAX training, while TPU metrics and libtpu logs appear in the Ray Dashboard for faster troubleshooting and migration between GPUs and TPUs.

Ray on GKE: New AI Scheduling and Scaling Features

🚀 Google Cloud and Anyscale describe tighter integration between Ray and Kubernetes to improve distributed AI scheduling and autoscaling on GKE. The release introduces a Ray Label Selector API (Ray v2.49) to align task, actor and placement-group placement with Kubernetes labels and GKE custom compute classes, enabling targeted placement and fallback strategies for GPUs and markets. It also adds Dynamic Resource Allocation for A4X/GB200 racks, writable cgroups for Ray resource isolation on GKE v1.34+, TPU/JAX training support via a JAXTrainer in Ray v2.49, and in-place pod resizing (Kubernetes v1.33) for vertical autoscaling and higher efficiency.

OAuth Device Code Phishing: Azure vs Google Compared

🔐 Matt Kiely of Huntress examines how the OAuth 2.0 device code flow enables phishing and highlights stark differences between Microsoft and Google. He walks through the device-code attack chain — generating a device code, social-engineering a user to enter it on a legitimate site, and polling the token endpoint to harvest access and refresh tokens. The analysis shows Azure’s implementation lets attackers control client_id and resource parameters to obtain powerful tokens, while Google’s implementation restricts device-code scopes and requires app controls that significantly limit abuse. Practical examples, cURL/Python snippets, and mitigation advice are included for defenders.

AI as Strategic Imperative for Modern Risk Management

🛡️ AI is a strategic imperative for modernizing risk management, enabling organizations to shift from reactive to proactive, data-driven strategies. Manfra highlights four practical AI uses—risk identification, risk assessment, risk mitigation, and monitoring and reporting—and shows how NLP, predictive analytics, automation, and continuous monitoring can improve coverage and timeliness. She also outlines operational hurdles including legacy infrastructure, fragmented tooling, specialized talent shortages, and third-party risks, and calls for leadership-backed governance aligned to SAIF, NIST AI RMF, and ISO 42001.

Google Cloud's Roadmap to a Quantum-Safe Infrastructure

🔒 Google Cloud has been migrating its infrastructure toward post-quantum cryptography for nearly a decade to mitigate Store Now, Decrypt Later (SNDL) risks. The company has deployed the standards-based ML-KEM (FIPS 203) for key exchange across internal traffic and the Google Cloud networking stack, and introduced ML-KEM capabilities in Cloud KMS (preview) for key generation, encapsulation, and decapsulation. It also added native support for ML-DSA and SLH-DSA in Cloud KMS to protect long-lived digital signatures, and is phasing quantum-safe certificate support into Certificate Authority Service to enable future PQC-ready PKI. Administrators will receive tooling to opt in, audit cryptographic assets, and manage transitions to hybrid or pure PQC deployments as standards mature.

Global Payments: Resilient Scale Architecture with Cloud SQL

☁️ Global Payments partnered with Google Cloud to design a multi-region, highly available database architecture using Cloud SQL Enterprise Plus. The deployment spans three regions with zonal replication, read replicas, cascading replication, and Cloud SQL Auth Proxy integration to support low-latency reads and rapid failover. This configuration yields near-zero planned downtime, sub-minute RTO and zero RPO for Tier 1 workloads, while meeting PCI DSS, GDPR, and NIST requirements.

Spike in Automated Botnet Attacks Targeting PHP, IoT

🔍 Cybersecurity researchers warn of a sharp rise in automated botnet campaigns targeting PHP servers, IoT devices, and cloud gateways. The Qualys Threat Research Unit says Mirai, Gafgyt, Mozi and similar botnets are exploiting known CVEs, misconfigurations and exposed secrets to recruit vulnerable systems. Attackers leverage active debug interfaces (for example using '/?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=phpstorm'), scan from cloud providers to mask origin, and turn compromised routers and DVRs into residential proxies. Recommended mitigations include prompt patching, removing development tools from production, securing secrets with AWS Secrets Manager or HashiCorp Vault, and restricting public cloud access.

Google Public Sector Summit: A New Era for Government AI

🔔 At the Google Public Sector Summit in Washington D.C., leaders highlighted a shift toward agentic AI and large-scale cloud modernization. Google introduced Gemini for Government, an accredited platform providing an AI Agent Gallery, agent-to-agent protocols, enterprise connectors, and governance controls to deploy and monitor AI agents. Speakers showcased real-world deployments across defense, city, and education sectors, and Google announced expanded partner investments plus an enhanced partnership with NVIDIA to support on-premises and air-gapped environments.

Google Cloud launches unified home for technical docs

📚 Google Cloud has consolidated all technical documentation onto a new, dedicated platform to improve discoverability and support AI-driven experiences. By centralizing content on a unified site and integrating Gemini into authoring tools, Google aims to accelerate content creation and deliver context-aware assistance. The site offers faster performance, AI-powered translation across 12 languages, and preserves existing URL patterns to minimize disruption.

Giles AI on Google Cloud: Transforming Medical Research

🚀 Giles AI migrated its healthcare-focused platform to Google Cloud to reduce latency, improve scalability, and accelerate developer velocity. Using Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, and Compute Engine, the company orchestrates complex clinical data flows and routes prompts through Vertex AI and Model Garden to remain model-agnostic. Data storage and extraction are handled with Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, and Document AI, while Cloud Armor and Security Command Center bolster security and compliance. Early customer results include dramatic reductions in research time and improvements in response accuracy.

Agent Factory Recap: AI Agents for Data Engineering

🔍 The episode of The Agent Factory reviewed practical AI agents for data engineering and data science, highlighting demos that combine Gemini, BigQuery, Colab Enterprise, and Spanner-based graph queries. It showcased a BigQuery Data Engineering Agent that generates pipelines, time dimensions, and data-quality assertions from SQL, and a Data Science Agent that runs end-to-end anomaly detection in Colab. The post also covered CodeMender for autonomous code security fixes and a creative Spanner+ADK comic demo illustrating multi-region concepts.

Google Public Sector Expands Investments in Partners

🚀 At Partner Connect during the Google Public Sector Summit, Google announced expanded investments to deepen collaboration and accelerate AI adoption across the public sector partner ecosystem. Highlights include increased Rapid Innovation Team funding, doubled capacity for Partner Development Sprints, and boosted Deal Acceleration Funds to shorten sales cycles. Google also launched three new Public Sector Partner Expertise badges for Google Distributed Cloud, Infrastructure Modernization, and Gemini for Government, a standardized Services Subcontractor Program, and an expanded ISV ATO Accelerator offering up to $250,000 in GCP credits plus $500,000 in services reimbursements to speed FedRAMP/Impact Level readiness. Partner Demo Portal improvements, enhanced analytics, new labs, and bootcamps round out efforts to simplify co-selling and accelerate partner time-to-market.

PayPal and Google Cloud Launch Agentic Commerce Solution

🛒 PayPal and Google Cloud announced a joint agentic commerce offering that integrates Google Cloud’s Conversational Commerce agent with payments powered by PayPal. The solution leverages the open Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol and the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)—which extends A2A and the Model Context Protocol—to enable agent-to-agent payment flows secured by Verifiable Digital Credentials. Merchants can deploy Google’s out‑of‑the‑box conversational agent or build custom agents with the Agent Development Kit (ADK), retaining control over tone, branding, and the customer relationship while benefiting from integrated payment and fraud controls.

How Five Agencies Built Impossible Ads with Gemini

🎨 Google showcased how five agencies used Gemini 2.5 Pro and complementary generative media models to produce ambitious ad campaigns that blend nostalgia, personalization, and scalable visual storytelling. Projects ranged from a retro AI radio for Slice to personalized "postcard" ads for Virgin Voyages, AI co-hosts and party themes for Smirnoff, crowdsourced mascots for Visit Orlando, and cinematic short film work with Moncler. Results highlighted rapid production, measurable engagement lifts, and cross-product workflows across Imagen, Veo, Lyria, and Vertex AI. The post invites brands to explore these tools for creative scale and efficiency.

Practical Guide to Google Cloud Parameter Manager Overview

🔒 Google Cloud's Parameter Manager centralizes application configuration to avoid hard-coded credentials and fragile config files, supporting validated JSON and YAML payloads as well as arbitrary unformatted data. It integrates with Secret Manager using a __REF__ syntax to keep confidential values separate and uses versioned, immutable parameter versions to prevent accidental changes. The post walks through storing an API key in Secret Manager, granting the Parameter Manager IAM principal access, and calling renderParameterVersion from a Node backend. A sample React/Node weather app demonstrates runtime configuration, fallback dummy data, and advanced patterns such as regional parameters and feature rollouts.

Cross-Cloud VPC Peering with NVAs and Regional Affinity

🌐 This blog presents a reference architecture for deploying Network Virtual Appliances (NVAs) in a regional hub-and-spoke design using VPC Network Peering. It explains how Google’s Cross-Cloud Network and software-defined global backbone support any-to-any connectivity while preserving regional affinity for latency and data residency. The post details traffic flows and key services such as Cloud Interconnect, HA VPN, Internal Passthrough Network Load Balancers, policy-based routes, and Private Service Connect to integrate managed services and workload VPCs.