From Google Cloud Blog · 40 stories
Meta Introduces Hybrid Asset Classification for Privacy-Aware Infrastructure
Meta has unveiled a hybrid asset classification strategy using large language models (LLMs) to handle ambiguous data in privacy-aware infrastructure while maintaining deterministic rules for enforcement. This method addresses the complexities of AI-native products with varied data inputs, ensuring compliance and effective data governance. It is a response to the challenges posed by the increasing speed and scale of AI innovations, and the approach aims to better manage privacy controls for evolving AI products.
Strategic Frameworks and Systems Vital for Successful AI Integration in Enterprises
AI's integration in enterprises is moving beyond model development to focus on creating robust systems for execution and governance. This shift highlights the importance of developing adaptable frameworks to support AI's role across various functions such as finance, HR, and operations. It reflects a broader industry trend where the focus is on building the necessary infrastructure to ensure AI's ongoing, safe, and productive incorporation into real-world workflows, addressing the current challenges and limitations.
New AI Models for Long-Horizon Coding Tasks Introduced
Several AI models aimed at long-horizon tasks in coding and robotics have been released. GLM-5.2 by Hugging Face extends support for coding-agent scenarios with a 1 million token context. Cognition's SWE-1.7 enhances long-horizon asynchronous tasks with reinforcement learning. Xiaomi-Robotics-1 combines vast pre-training data for improved robotics capabilities. These releases highlight advances in scaling and reasoning capabilities.
Amazon Bedrock Enhances AI Capabilities with Security and Operational Features
Amazon Bedrock has introduced several updates to improve the security and operational management of AI applications, emphasizing capabilities for multi-tenant AI, data retention policies, and compliance with US government standards. Key features include resource-based policies, managed entitlements for model subscriptions, zero data retention enforcement, and AI model support in AWS GovCloud. These advancements aim to streamline AI adoption across diverse sectors while maintaining security and governance standards.
Supply Chain Attacks Target Open Source, Impacting Over 2,500 Organizations
Software supply chain attacks targeting open source repositories and CI/CD systems have increased significantly, with a recent incident impacting over 2,500 organizations and 430,000 CI/CD pipelines. This attack, attributed to TeamPCP, initially compromised Aqua Security's Trivy vulnerability scanner and subsequently affected projects like LiteLLM, leading to the exposure of terabytes of credentials from major companies.
Google Expands Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform with Remote MCP Server
Google has enhanced its Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform by introducing a remote Managed Control Plane (MCP) server. This update allows developers to securely connect external AI agents with Google Cloud resources, facilitating agent development across various IDEs. The enhancements address developer feedback on building more efficient, production-ready AI agents.
Cloudflare moves to post-quantum cryptography with ML-KEM and ML-DSA
Cloudflare is transitioning its encryption methods to ML-KEM and ML-DSA to address quantum computing threats. The U.S. NIST standardized these algorithms in 2024, and Cloudflare aims for full post-quantum security by 2029.
UNC6671 Extortion Group Rebrands and Continues Vishing Attacks on Financial Firms
The UNC6671 extortion group has rebranded its operations under new names including Redact, Pink, Helix, and Falcon, despite an alleged retirement of its previous BlackFile brand. The group continues to use voice phishing (vishing) to target enterprise employees, particularly in financial services, private equity, and professional services, leading to data theft from cloud environments like Microsoft 365 and Okta.
Google and FBI Disrupt NetNut Proxy Network of 2 Million Devices
Google, the FBI, Lumen, and others disrupted the NetNut residential proxy network involving over 2 million devices used for malicious activities. The operation disabled command-and-control features, protecting home devices from being exploited. This action significantly reduces cybercriminals' ability to mask their activities using residential IPs.
Google Launches Faster AI Models for Image and Video: Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash
Google announced the launch of Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash, models designed to enhance multimedia processing efficiency. Nano Banana 2 Lite focuses on low-cost, fast image generation, while Omni Flash offers advanced video generation and editing. Available across Google platforms, these models aim to streamline creative workflows for developers and businesses using AI-generated content.
2026 Public Sector M-Trends Report Highlights Alarming Cybersecurity Trends
The 2026 Public Sector Threat Landscape report reveals significant vulnerabilities in cybersecurity for the public sector, including a 22-second median hand-off to ransomware operators. These findings underscore an urgent need for rapid, machine-speed defenses amidst evolving attack methods that exploit trust boundaries.
Google Cloud C4N Instances Now Generally Available for High I/O Workloads
Google Cloud has announced the general availability of C4N, optimized for network and block storage I/O. This instance type offers up to 400 Gbps network bandwidth and 1M IOPS, addressing performance bottlenecks for enterprise applications, particularly in sectors requiring high data transfer rates.
Mandiant Identifies Vulnerability in ADFS Certificate Management
Mandiant discovered that improper manual rotation of ADFS certificates can expose active signing keys in Machine DPAPI. This vulnerability allows attackers to forge SAML tokens and bypass authentication mechanisms, posing significant risks to enterprise security.
Schrödinger accelerates molecular discovery by 4x using AlphaEvolve
Schrödinger partnered with Google Cloud to implement AlphaEvolve, enhancing their MLFF process by 4x. This advancement resolves the trade-off between speed and precision in molecular simulations, significantly impacting drug discovery and materials design.
Amazon Quick Enhances Efficiency for Finance, Sales, and Supply Chain Management
Amazon Quick, a generative AI assistant, enhances efficiency for AWS Finance, sales teams, Tradeshift, and supply chain operations. It streamlines data preparation, administrative tasks, and analytics processes, allowing organizations to improve productivity and response times across various sectors.
Malachyte Raises $10M Seed Funding to Bring Spotify-like AI Recommendations to E-commerce
Malachyte, a startup founded by former Spotify engineers Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha, secured $10 million in seed funding to apply its AI-driven recommendation technology to e-commerce. The company aims to provide real-time, intent-aware shopping experiences, moving beyond traditional personalization methods based on past purchases or demographics. Its platform uses a "two-headed Vector AI" system, similar to Spotify's Vector AI which powers 90% of its recommendations, to predict shopper intent.
Mirendil Secures $100M+ Google Cloud Deal for Self-Improving AI Compute
AI lab Mirendil has signed a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud, valued at over $100 million, to acquire compute capacity for its self-improving AI research. This agreement provides Mirendil with access to Google's TPUs and Nvidia GPUs, enabling the startup to scale its work on AI systems that iteratively improve themselves.
Google Cloud Introduces AI Security Blueprint for Kubernetes Engine
Google Cloud has released a security blueprint for AI workloads on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). This strategic guide suggests a multilayered security approach to protect model weights and counter threats like prompt injection, advancing AI's transition from prototype to production. It matters as AI deployment security becomes crucial for enterprises.
Google Threat Intelligence Group Unifies Threat Actor Naming System
Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has introduced a new unified naming schema for tracking threat actors, replacing the previously separate systems used by Mandiant and Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG). This change aims to standardize threat actor identification across platforms and public reporting, making it easier for defenders to understand and respond to threats.
Google's AlphaEvolve Released for General Use on Gemini Enterprise Platform
Google has announced that AlphaEvolve, an AI-driven code optimization service, is now generally available on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Featuring evolutionary algorithm techniques, it enables organizations to optimize their code within their own infrastructure boundaries, supporting diverse industries. This advancement signifies a robust approach to tackling optimization challenges across sectors like logistics and genomics.
Anthropic Launches Claude Apps Gateway for AWS and Google Cloud
Anthropic has launched the Claude apps gateway for both AWS and Google Cloud. This tool provides enterprises with centralized management of Claude Code, enhancing control over access, costs, and policy adherence. By streamlining developer credential management and spend tracking, the gateway eases administrative burdens for organizations operating at scale.
AWS & Google Cloud Designated as Critical Third Parties to UK's Financial Sector
HM Treasury has designated Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud as critical third parties to the UK financial sector. Under the Critical Third Party (CTP) regime effective January 1, 2025, these tech giants will be subject to oversight from UK regulators such as the Bank of England. This move aims to enhance the operational resilience of the financial sector amidst increasing reliance on cloud services.
AWS and Google Launch New Sandboxing Environments for Running Untrusted Code
AWS Lambda has introduced MicroVMs, a new serverless compute option offering VM-level isolation for running user-generated code. Concurrently, Google Cloud has launched Cloud Run sandboxes in public preview, enabling safe execution of AI-generated code and untrusted binaries. Both solutions aim to provide secure, isolated environments for a variety of applications.
Google Cloud DMS Automates SQL Server to PostgreSQL Migration with Gemini AI
Google Cloud's Database Migration Service (DMS) now automates the translation of SQL Server stored procedures that return multiple result sets into PostgreSQL's `SETOF refcursor` architecture. This update integrates Gemini, Google's generative AI, to convert proprietary SQL code to PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, addressing a key bottleneck in large-scale database migrations.
Google expands Americas network with three new subsea cables and Firmina branch
Google is expanding its network infrastructure in the Americas with three new subsea cable systems: Alisios, Canoa, and OlaLuz, along with a new branch for the existing Firmina cable. This expansion aims to improve connectivity, reliability, and resilience for internet users and cloud services across Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America.
Google Cloud launches Developer Device Platform for mobile app development and testing
Google Cloud has launched the public preview of its Developer Device Platform (DDP), a fully managed cloud service providing on-demand access to physical devices and virtual emulators for mobile app development and testing. This platform aims to simplify the process of building, testing, and debugging applications across various devices, particularly for agentic development.
Google Kubernetes Engine Integrates ClusterNetworkPolicy for Centralized Network Security
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) has integrated ClusterNetworkPolicy (CNP), an open-source standard from the Kubernetes SIG-Policy Working Group, to provide centralized network security management. This integration allows administrators to implement consistent, non-bypassable policies across a cluster, addressing the limitations of standard Kubernetes NetworkPolicy for global security enforcement.
BigQuery Data Transfer Service Adds New Connectors and Capabilities for Data Ingestion
Google Cloud's BigQuery Data Transfer Service (DTS) has expanded its data ingestion capabilities with new connectors and features, including direct ingestion into Apache Iceberg tables, a managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, and support for additional databases and marketing platforms. These updates aim to reduce the effort required for data movement into BigQuery, allowing users to integrate more diverse data sources with less manual setup.
Google Cloud and MLCommons use Confidential Computing for privacy-preserving medical AI evaluation
Google Cloud is collaborating with MLCommons' MedPerf initiative to enable privacy-preserving evaluation of medical AI models using Confidential Computing. This partnership allows AI models to be benchmarked on diverse, real-world patient data within secure environments, addressing the challenge of evaluating AI without direct access to sensitive information. The technology is already being applied to brain tumor research through the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) initiative, helping to overcome data scarcity and model generalization issues.
Google Cloud Filestore now uses Colossus for enhanced scalability and performance decoupling
Google Cloud's Filestore, an NFS file service, now incorporates Colossus, Google's distributed storage system, as its backend storage layer. This integration allows Filestore to decouple storage capacity and performance, offering greater flexibility and scalability for demanding workloads, including AI and containerized environments.
Google Data Commons on Spanner Graph Reaches General Availability, Platform Previewed
Google announced the general availability of Data Commons on Spanner Graph and a preview of the new Data Commons Platform. This update allows businesses to integrate their private data with public datasets from over 100 providers, facilitating the creation of knowledge graphs for informed decision-making.
AlloyDB Introduces IAM Group Authentication for Enterprise and AI Agent Access
Google Cloud's AlloyDB now supports Identity and Access Management (IAM) group authentication, available in preview. This feature allows for identity-driven access control, simplifying database security management for large organizations and AI agents by moving beyond individual user provisioning.
Google Cloud expands Conversational Analytics to BigQuery, Looker, and databases
Google Cloud announced the general availability of Conversational Analytics for BigQuery and Looker, and a preview for AlloyDB, Cloud SQL, and Spanner. This expansion allows users to query data across multi-cloud and database workloads using natural language, integrating with tools like BigQuery Studio and Gemini Enterprise. The update provides broader access to generative AI capabilities for data analysis within Google Cloud's ecosystem.
Google Cloud introduces new cost controls for AI services with anomaly detection
Google Cloud has launched new features in its Billing console, including early anomaly detection for AI services and spend caps on Google Cloud Budgets. These tools help users monitor and control unpredictable AI-related cloud costs, which can fluctuate significantly with generative AI workloads.
SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for BigQuery is now generally available
SAP and Google Cloud have announced the general availability of SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for BigQuery. This integration provides zero-copy access to data products between SAP Business Data Cloud and Google's BigQuery, aiming to reduce data silos and accelerate analytics and AI initiatives.
NOAA selects Google Cloud for Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has chosen Google Cloud as the primary provider for its Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS). This move transitions NOAA's weather prediction infrastructure from on-premises to a cloud-first model, making it one of the first operational Numerical Weather Prediction centers globally to adopt a public cloud for its core operations.
Checkout.com Migrates to Managed Service for Apache Airflow to Improve Efficiency
Checkout.com migrated from a self-managed Apache Airflow setup to Google Cloud's Managed Service for Apache Airflow (Gen 3). This change enhances reliability, reduces infrastructure management costs, and increases developer efficiency by automating scaling and simplifying dependency management.
Google Cloud Enhances IAM with Conditions for Better Access Control
Google Cloud's Identity and Access Management (IAM) now allows for more granular permissions through IAM conditions. This enhancement enables organizations to apply the Principle of Least Privilege more effectively by constraining access to specific resources within projects.
Google AlloyDB Boosts AI Functionality with New Features and Performance Enhancements
Google has introduced new AI functions to AlloyDB, enhancing data processing with features such as sentiment analysis and improved multilingual search. These updates include Gemini model integration for better handling of logographical languages and a 4x speed increase for vector searches. These improvements allow businesses to efficiently manage and analyze unstructured data.
Cloud Run simplifies multi-region service deployment for better availability
Cloud Run has introduced features for easier deployment of multi-region, highly available services. Users can now use readiness probes for health checks and automate failover to healthy regions, reducing downtime.