Llama 4 models from Meta now available in Amazon Bedrock serverless

The newest AI models form Meta, Llama 4 Scout 17B and Llama 4 Maverick 17B, are now available as a fully managed, serverless option in Amazon Bedrock. These new foundation models (FMs) deliver natively multimodal capabilities with early fusion technology that you can use for precise image grounding and extended context processing in your applications.

Llama 4 uses an innovative mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture that provides enhanced performance across reasoning and image understanding tasks while optimizing for both cost and speed. This architectural approach enables Llama 4 to offer improved performance at lower cost compared to Llama 3, with expanded language support for global applications.

The models were already available on Amazon SageMaker JumpStart, and you can now use them in Amazon Bedrock to streamline building and scaling generative AI applications with enterprise-grade security and privacy.

Llama 4 Maverick 17B – A natively multimodal model featuring 128 experts and 400 billion total parameters. It excels in image and text understanding, making it suitable for versatile assistant and chat applications. The model supports a 1 million token context window, giving you the flexibility to process lengthy documents and complex inputs.

Llama 4 Scout 17B – A general-purpose multimodal model with 16 experts, 17 billion active parameters, and 109 billion total parameters that delivers superior performance compared to all previous Llama models. Amazon Bedrock currently supports a 3.5 million token context window for Llama 4 Scout, with plans to expand in the near future.

Use cases for Llama 4 models
You can use the advanced capabilities of Llama 4 models for a wide range of use cases across industries:

Enterprise applications – Build intelligent agents that can reason across tools and workflows, process multimodal inputs, and deliver high-quality responses for business applications.

Multilingual assistants – Create chat applications that understand images and provide high-quality responses across multiple languages, making them accessible to global audiences.

Code and document intelligence – Develop applications that can understand code, extract structured data from documents, and provide insightful analysis across large volumes of text and code.

Customer support – Enhance support systems with image analysis capabilities, enabling more effective problem resolution when customers share screenshots or photos.

Content creation – Generate creative content across multiple languages, with the ability to understand and respond to visual inputs.

Research – Build research applications that can integrate and analyze multimodal data, providing insights across text and images.

Using Llama 4 models in Amazon Bedrock
To use these new serverless models in Amazon Bedrock, I first need to request access. In the Amazon Bedrock console, I choose Model access from the navigation pane to toggle access to Llama 4 Maverick 17B and Llama 4 Scout 17B models.

Console screenshot.

The Llama 4 models can be easily integrated into your applications using the Amazon Bedrock Converse API, which provides a unified interface for conversational AI interactions.

Here’s an example of how to use the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3) with Llama 4 Maverick for a multimodal conversation:

import boto3
import json
import os

AWS_REGION = "us-west-2"
MODEL_ID = "us.meta.llama4-maverick-17b-instruct-v1:0"
IMAGE_PATH = "image.jpg"


def get_file_extension(filename: str) -> str:
    """Get the file extension."""
    extension = os.path.splitext(filename)[1].lower()[1:] or 'txt'
    if extension == 'jpg':
        extension = 'jpeg'
    return extension


def read_file(file_path: str) -> bytes:
    """Read a file in binary mode."""
    try:
        with open(file_path, 'rb') as file:
            return file.read()
    except Exception as e:
        raise Exception(f"Error reading file {file_path}: {str(e)}")

bedrock_runtime = boto3.client(
    service_name="bedrock-runtime",
    region_name=AWS_REGION
)

request_body = {
    "messages": [
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": [
                {
                    "text": "What can you tell me about this image?"
                },
                {
                    "image": {
                        "format": get_file_extension(IMAGE_PATH),
                        "source": {"bytes": read_file(IMAGE_PATH)},
                    }
                },
            ],
        }
    ]
}

response = bedrock_runtime.converse(
    modelId=MODEL_ID,
    messages=request_body["messages"]
)

print(response["output"]["message"]["content"][-1]["text"])

This example demonstrates how to send both text and image inputs to the model and receive a conversational response. The Converse API abstracts away the complexity of working with different model input formats, providing a consistent interface across models in Amazon Bedrock.

For more interactive use cases, you can also use the streaming capabilities of the Converse API:

response_stream = bedrock_runtime.converse_stream(
    modelId=MODEL_ID,
    messages=request_body['messages']
)

stream = response_stream.get('stream')
if stream:
    for event in stream:

        if 'messageStart' in event:
            print(f"\nRole: {event['messageStart']['role']}")

        if 'contentBlockDelta' in event:
            print(event['contentBlockDelta']['delta']['text'], end="")

        if 'messageStop' in event:
            print(f"\nStop reason: {event['messageStop']['stopReason']}")

        if 'metadata' in event:
            metadata = event['metadata']
            if 'usage' in metadata:
                print(f"Usage: {json.dumps(metadata['usage'], indent=4)}")
            if 'metrics' in metadata:
                print(f"Metrics: {json.dumps(metadata['metrics'], indent=4)}")

With streaming, your applications can provide a more responsive experience by displaying model outputs as they are generated.

Things to know
The Llama 4 models are available today with a fully managed, serverless experience in Amazon Bedrock in the US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) AWS Regions. You can also access Llama 4 in US East (Ohio) via cross-region inference.

As usual with Amazon Bedrock, you pay for what you use. For more information, see Amazon Bedrock pricing.

These models support 12 languages for text (English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Arabic, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese) and English when processing images.

To start using these new models today, visit the Meta Llama models section in the Amazon Bedrock User Guide. You can also explore how our Builder communities are using Amazon Bedrock in their solutions in the generative AI section of our community.aws site.

Danilo


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Reduce your operational overhead today with Amazon CloudFront SaaS Manager

Today, I’m happy to announce the general availability of Amazon CloudFront SaaS Manager, a new feature that helps software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, web development platform providers, and companies with multiple brands and websites efficiently manage delivery across multiple domains. Customers already use CloudFront to securely deliver content with low latency and high transfer speeds. CloudFront SaaS Manager addresses a critical challenge these organizations face: managing tenant websites at scale, each requiring TLS certificates, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, and performance monitoring.

With CloudFront Saas Manager, web development platform providers and enterprise SaaS providers who manage a large number of domains will use simple APIs and reusable configurations that use CloudFront edge locations worldwide, AWS WAF, and AWS Certificate Manager. CloudFront SaaS Manager can dramatically reduce operational complexity while providing high-performance content delivery and enterprise-grade security for every customer domain.

How it works
In CloudFront, you can use multi-tenant SaaS deployments, a strategy where a single CloudFront distribution serves content for multiple distinct tenants (users or organizations). CloudFront SaaS Manager uses a new template-based distribution model called a multi-tenant distribution to serve content across multiple domains while sharing configuration and infrastructure. However, if supporting single websites or application, a standard distribution would be better or recommended.

A template distribution defines the base configuration that will be used across domains such as origin configurations, cache behaviors, and security settings. Each template distribution has a distribution tenant to represent domain-specific origin paths or origin domain names including web access control list (ACL) overrides and custom TLS certificates.

Optionally, multiple distribution tenants can use the same connection group that provides the CloudFront routing endpoint that serves content to viewers. DNS records point to the CloudFront endpoint of the connection group using a Canonical Name Record (CNAME).

To learn more, visit Understand how multi-tenant distributions work in the Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide.

CloudFront SaaS Manager in action
I’d like to give you an example to help you understand the capabilities of CloudFront SaaS Manager. You have a company called MyStore, a popular e-commerce platform that helps your customer easily set up and manage an online store. MyStore’s tenants already enjoy outstanding customer service, security, reliability, and ease-of-use with little setup required to get a store up and running, resulting in 99.95 percent uptime for the last 12 months.

Customers of MyStore are unevenly distributed across three different pricing tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold, and each customer is assigned a persistent mystore.app subdomain. You can apply these tiers to different customer segments, customized settings, and operational Regions. For example, you can add AWS WAF service in the Gold tier as an advanced feature. In this example, MyStore has decided not to maintain their own web servers to handle TLS connections and security for a growing number of applications hosted on their platform. They are evaluating CloudFront to see if that will help them reduce operational overhead.

Let’s find how as MyStore you configure your customer’s websites distributed in multiple tiers with the CloudFront SaaS Manager. To get started, you can create a multi-tenant distribution that acts as a template corresponding to each of the three pricing tiers the MyStore offers: Bronze, Sliver, and Gold shown in Multi-tenant distribution under the SaaS menu on the Amazon CloudFront console.

To create a multi-tenant distribution, choose Create distribution and select Multi-tenant architecture if you have multiple websites or applications that will share the same configuration. Follow the steps to provide basic details such as a name for your distribution, tags, and wildcard certificate, specify origin type and location for your content such as a website or app, and enable security protections with AWS WAF web ACL feature.

When the multi-tenant distribution is created successfully, you can create a distribution tenant by choosing Create tenant in the Distribution tenants menu in the left navigation pane. You can create a distribution tenant to add your active customer to be associated with the Bronze tier.

Each tenant can be associated with up to one multi-tenant distribution. You can add one or more domains of your customers to a distribution tenant and assign custom parameter values such as origin domains and origin paths. A distribution tenant can inherit the TLS certificate and security configuration of its associated multi-tenant distribution. You can also attach a new certificate specifically for the tenant, or you can override the tenant security configuration.

When the distribution tenant is created successfully, you can finalize this step by updating a DNS record to route traffic to the domain in this distribution tenant and creating a CNAME pointed to the CloudFront application endpoint. To learn more, visit Create a distribution in the Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide.

Now you can see all customers in each distribution tenant to associate multi-tenant distributions.

By increasing customers’ business needs, you can upgrade your customers from Bronze to Silver tiers by moving those distribution tenants to a proper multi-tenant distribution.

During the monthly maintenance process, we identify domains associated with inactive customer accounts that can be safely decommissioned. If you’ve decided to deprecate the Bronze tier and migrate all customers who are currently in the Bronze tier to the Silver tier, then you can delete a multi-tenant distribution to associate the Bronze tier. To learn more, visit Update a distribution or Distribution tenant customizations in the Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide.

By default, your AWS account has one connection group that handles all your CloudFront traffic. You can enable Connection group in the Settings menu in the left navigation pane to create additional connection groups, giving you more control over traffic management and tenant isolation.

To learn more, visit Create custom connection group in the Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide.

Now available
Amazon CloudFront SaaS Manager is available today. To learn about, visit CloudFront SaaS Manager product page and documentation page. To learn about SaaS on AWS, visit AWS SaaS Factory.

Give CloudFront SaaS Manager a try in the CloudFront console today and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Amazon CloudFront or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

Veliswa.
_______________________________________________

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Writer Palmyra X5 and X4 foundation models are now available in Amazon Bedrock

One thing we’ve witnessed in recent months is the expansion of context windows in foundation models (FMs), with many now handling sequence lengths that would have been unimaginable just a year ago. However, building AI-powered applications that can process vast amounts of information while maintaining the reliability and security standards required for enterprise use remains challenging.

For these reasons, we’re excited to announce that Writer Palmyra X5 and X4 models are available today in Amazon Bedrock as a fully managed, serverless offering. AWS is the first major cloud provider to deliver fully managed models from Writer. Palmyra X5 is a new model launched today by Writer. Palmyra X4 was previously available in Amazon Bedrock Marketplace.

Writer Palmyra models offer robust reasoning capabilities that support complex agent-based workflows while maintaining enterprise security standards and reliability. Palmyra X5 features a one million token context window, and Palmyra X4 supports a 128K token context window. With these extensive context windows, these models remove some of the traditional constraints for app and agent development, enabling deeper analysis and more comprehensive task completion.

With this launch, Amazon Bedrock continues to bring access to the most advanced models and the tools you need to build generative AI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI.

As a pioneer in FM development, Writer trains and fine-tunes its industry leading models on Amazon SageMaker HyperPod. With its optimized distributed training environment, Writer reduces training time and brings its models to market faster.

Palmyra X5 and X4 use cases
Writer Palmyra X5 and X4 are designed specifically for enterprise use cases, combining powerful capabilities with stringent security measures, including System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance certifications.

Palmyra X5 and X4 models excel in various enterprise use cases across multiple industries:

Financial services – Palmyra models power solutions across investment banking and asset and wealth management, including deal transaction support, 10-Q, 10-K and earnings transcript highlights, fund and market research, and personalized client outreach at scale.

Healthcare and life science – Payors and providers use Palmyra models to build solutions for member acquisition and onboarding, appeals and grievances, case and utilization management, and employer request for proposal (RFP) response. Pharmaceutical companies use these models for commercial applications, medical affairs, R&D, and clinical trials.

Retail and consumer goods – Palmyra models enable AI solutions for product description creation and variation, performance analysis, SEO updates, brand and compliance reviews, automated campaign workflows, and RFP analysis and response.

Technology – Companies across the technology sector implement Palmyra models for personalized and account-based marketing, content creation, campaign workflow automation, account preparation and research, knowledge support, job briefs and candidate reports, and RFP responses.

Palmyra models support a comprehensive suite of enterprise-grade capabilities, including:

Adaptive thinking – Hybrid models combining advanced reasoning with enterprise-grade reliability, excelling at complex problem-solving and sophisticated decision-making processes.

Multistep tool-calling – Support for advanced tool-calling capabilities that can be used in complex multistep workflows and agentic actions, including interaction with enterprise systems to perform tasks like updating systems, executing transactions, sending emails, and triggering workflows.

Enterprise-grade reliability – Consistent, accurate results while maintaining strict quality standards required for enterprise use, with models specifically trained on business content to align outputs with professional standards.

Using Palmyra X5 and X4 in Amazon Bedrock
As for all new serverless models in Amazon Bedrock, I need to request access first. In the Amazon Bedrock console, I choose Model access from the navigation pane to enable access to Palmyra X5 and Palmyra X4 models.

Console screenshot

When I have access to the models, I can start building applications with any AWS SDKs using the Amazon Bedrock Converse API. The models use cross-Region inference with these inference profiles:

  • For Palmyra X5: us.writer.palmyra-x5-v1:0
  • For Palmyra X4: us.writer.palmyra-x4-v1:0

Here’s a sample implementation with the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3). In this scenario, there is a new version of an existing product. I need to prepare a detailed comparison of what’s new. I have the old and new product manuals. I use the large input context of Palmyra X5 to read and compare the two versions of the manual and prepare a first draft of the comparison document.

import sys
import os
import boto3
import re

AWS_REGION = "us-west-2"
MODEL_ID = "us.writer.palmyra-x5-v1:0"
DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FILE = "product_comparison.md"

def create_bedrock_runtime_client(region: str = AWS_REGION):
    """Create and return a Bedrock client."""
    return boto3.client('bedrock-runtime', region_name=region)

def get_file_extension(filename: str) -> str:
    """Get the file extension."""
    return os.path.splitext(filename)[1].lower()[1:] or 'txt'

def sanitize_document_name(filename: str) -> str:
    """Sanitize document name."""
    # Remove extension and get base name
    name = os.path.splitext(filename)[0]
    
    # Replace invalid characters with space
    name = re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9\s\-\(\)\[\]]', ' ', name)
    
    # Replace multiple spaces with single space
    name = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', name)
    
    # Strip leading/trailing spaces
    return name.strip()

def read_file(file_path: str) -> bytes:
    """Read a file in binary mode."""
    try:
        with open(file_path, 'rb') as file:
            return file.read()
    except Exception as e:
        raise Exception(f"Error reading file {file_path}: {str(e)}")

def generate_comparison(client, document1: bytes, document2: bytes, filename1: str, filename2: str) -> str:
    """Generate a markdown comparison of two product manuals."""
    print(f"Generating comparison for {filename1} and {filename2}")
    try:
        response = client.converse(
            modelId=MODEL_ID,
            messages=[
                {
                    "role": "user",
                    "content": [
                        {
                            "text": "Please compare these two product manuals and create a detailed comparison in markdown format. Focus on comparing key features, specifications, and highlight the main differences between the products."
                        },
                        {
                            "document": {
                                "format": get_file_extension(filename1),
                                "name": sanitize_document_name(filename1),
                                "source": {
                                    "bytes": document1
                                }
                            }
                        },
                        {
                            "document": {
                                "format": get_file_extension(filename2),
                                "name": sanitize_document_name(filename2),
                                "source": {
                                    "bytes": document2
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        )
        return response['output']['message']['content'][0]['text']
    except Exception as e:
        raise Exception(f"Error generating comparison: {str(e)}")

def main():
    if len(sys.argv) < 3 or len(sys.argv) > 4:
        cmd = sys.argv[0]
        print(f"Usage: {cmd} <manual1_path> <manual2_path> [output_file]")
        sys.exit(1)

    manual1_path = sys.argv[1]
    manual2_path = sys.argv[2]
    output_file = sys.argv[3] if len(sys.argv) == 4 else DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FILE
    paths = [manual1_path, manual2_path]

    # Check each file's existence
    for path in paths:
        if not os.path.exists(path):
            print(f"Error: File does not exist: {path}")
            sys.exit(1)

    try:
        # Create Bedrock client
        bedrock_runtime = create_bedrock_runtime_client()

        # Read both manuals
        print("Reading documents...")
        manual1_content = read_file(manual1_path)
        manual2_content = read_file(manual2_path)

        # Generate comparison directly from the documents
        print("Generating comparison...")
        comparison = generate_comparison(
            bedrock_runtime,
            manual1_content,
            manual2_content,
            os.path.basename(manual1_path),
            os.path.basename(manual2_path)
        )

        # Save comparison to file
        with open(output_file, 'w') as f:
            f.write(comparison)

        print(f"Comparison generated successfully! Saved to {output_file}")

    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error: {str(e)}")
        sys.exit(1)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

To learn how to use Amazon Bedrock with AWS SDKs, browse the code samples in the Amazon Bedrock User Guide.

Things to know
Writer Palmyra X5 and X4 models are available in Amazon Bedrock today in the US West (Oregon) AWS Region with cross-Region inference. For the most up-to-date information on model support by Region, refer to the Amazon Bedrock documentation. For information on pricing, visit Amazon Bedrock pricing.

These models support English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and multiple other languages, making them suitable for global enterprise applications.

Using the expansive context capabilities of these models, developers can build more sophisticated applications and agents that can process extensive documents, perform complex multistep reasoning, and handle sophisticated agentic workflows.

To start using Writer Palmyra X5 and X4 models today, visit the Writer model section in the Amazon Bedrock User Guide. You can also explore how our Builder communities are using Amazon Bedrock in their solutions in the generative AI section of our community.aws site.

Let us know what you build with these powerful new capabilities!

Danilo


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AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon Q Developer, AWS Account Management updates, and more (April 28, 2025)

Summit season is in full throttle! If you haven’t been to an AWS Summit, I highly recommend you check one out that’s nearby. They are large-scale all-day events where you can attend talks, watch interesting demos and activities, connect with AWS and industry people, and more. Best of all, they are free—so all you need to do is register! You can find a list of them here in the AWS Events page. Incidentally, you can also discover other AWS events going in your area on that same page; just use the filters on the side to find something that interests you.

Speaking of AWS Summits, this week is the AWS Summit London (April 30). It’s local for me, and I have been heavily involved in the planning. You do not want to miss this! Make sure to check it out and hopefully I’ll be seeing you there.

Ready to find out some highlights from last week’s exciting AWS launches? Let’s go!

New features and capabilities highlights
Let’s start by looking at some of the enhancements launched last week.

  • Amazon Q Developer releases state of the art agent for feature development — AWS has announced an update to Amazon Q Developer’s software development agent, which achieves state-of-the-art performance on industry benchmarks and can generate multiple candidate solutions for coding problems. This new agent provides more reliable suggestions helping to reduce debugging time and enabling developers to focus on higher-level design and innovation.
  • Amazon Cognito now supports refresh token rotation — Amazon Cognito now supports OAuth 2.0 refresh token rotation, allowing user pool clients to automatically replace existing refresh tokens with new ones at regular intervals, enhancing security without requiring users to re-authenticate. This feature helps customers achieve both seamless user experience and improved security by automatically updating refresh tokens frequently, rather than having to choose between long-lived tokens for convenience, or short-lived tokens for security.
  • Amazon Bedrock Intelligent Prompt Routing is now generally available — Amazon Bedrock’s Intelligent Prompt Routing, now generally available, automatically routes prompts to different foundation models within a model family to optimize response quality and cost. The service now offers increased configurability across multiple model families including Claude (Anthropic), Llama (Meta), and Nova (Amazon), allowing users to choose any two models from a family and set custom routing criteria.
  • Upgrades to Amazon Q Business integrations for M365 Word and Outlook — Amazon Q Business integrations for Microsoft Word and Outlook now have the ability to search company knowledge bases, support image attachments, and handle larger context windows for more detailed prompts. These enhancements enable users to seamlessly access indexed company data and incorporate richer content while working on documents and emails, without needing to switch between different applications or contexts.

Security
There were a few new security improvements released last week, but these are the ones that caught my eye:

  • AWS Account Management now supports account name update via authorized IAM principals — AWS now allows IAM principals to update account names, removing the previous requirement for root user access. This applies to both standalone accounts and member accounts within AWS Organizations, where authorized IAM principals in management and delegated admin accounts can manage account names centrally.
  • AWS Resource Explorer now supports AWS PrivateLink — AWS Resource Explorer now supports AWS PrivateLink across all commercial Regions, enabling secure resource discovery and search capabilities across AWS Regions and accounts within your VPC, without requiring public internet access.
  • Amazon SageMaker Lakehouse now supports attribute based access control — Amazon SageMaker Lakehouse now supports attribute-based access control (ABAC), allowing administrators to manage data access permissions using dynamic attributes associated with IAM identities rather than creating individual policies. This simplifies access management by enabling permissions to be automatically granted to any IAM principal with matching tags, making it more efficient to handle access control as teams grow.

Networking
As you may be aware, there is a growing industry push to adopt IPv6 as the default protocol for new systems while migrating existing infrastructure where possible. This week, two more services have added their support to help customers towards that goal:

Capacity and costs
Customers using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams can enjoy higher default quotas, while Amazon Redshift Serverless customers get a new cost saving opportunity.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to visit the What’s New with AWS? page.

Recommended Learning Resources
Everyone’s talking about MCP recently! Here are two great blog posts that I think will help you catch up and learn more about the possibilities of how to use MCP on AWS.

Our Weekly Roundup is published every Monday to help you keep up with AWS launches, so don’t forget to check it again next week for more exciting news!

Enjoy the rest of your day!


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Earth Kurma Targets Southeast Asia With Rootkits and Cloud-Based Data Theft Tools

Government and telecommunications sectors in Southeast Asia have become the target of a “sophisticated” campaign undertaken by a new advanced persistent threat (APT) group called Earth Kurma since June 2024.
The attacks, per Trend Micro, have leveraged custom malware, rootkits, and cloud storage services for data exfiltration. The Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia are among the

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Essential Cloud Security Practices Every User Must Follow

As businesses and individuals increasingly rely on cloud services for storage, collaboration, and computing power, the importance of securing cloud environments has never been more critical. Cloud computing offers numerous advantages, including scalability, accessibility, and cost-efficiency. However, with these benefits come significant security risks, such as data breaches, unauthorized access, and potential cyberattacks. To safeguard sensitive information and ensure secure operations, it’s essential to follow best practices in cloud security.

Whether you’re a business leader, an IT professional, or an individual user, understanding and implementing these essential cloud security practices can significantly reduce the risks associated with cloud computing.

1. Use Strong and Unique Passwords

One of the most basic yet crucial security practices is ensuring that you use strong, unique passwords for your cloud accounts. Many users make the mistake of reusing passwords or opting for simple combinations, which can be easily guessed or cracked by attackers.

•    Tips for creating strong passwords:
o    Use a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
o    Avoid common phrases or predictable sequences (e.g., “123456” or “password”).
o    Consider using a passphrase—a sequence of random words that are easy to remember but difficult to guess.

Additionally, make use of password managers to store and manage your passwords securely. These tools help generate strong passwords and reduce the risk of using weak or repeated ones across multiple platforms.

2. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Even the strongest password can be compromised. That’s why Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a critical layer of security that every user should enable. MFA requires users to provide two or more verification factors before gaining access to their accounts. This typically includes something you know (a password), something you have (a mobile device or security token), or something you are (biometric authentication like fingerprints or face recognition).

•    Why MFA is essential:

o    Even if an attacker manages to steal your password, they will still need the second factor to access your account.
o    MFA drastically reduces the chances of unauthorized access, especially in cases of data breaches or phishing attacks.

3. Regularly Update and Patch Cloud Systems

Cloud service providers (CSPs) are responsible for securing the underlying infrastructure, but users must also maintain their own security by keeping applications and software up to date. This includes cloud-based applications, third-party integrations, and any software you may be using in conjunction with your cloud services.

•    Why updates matter:

o    Security patches and updates fix vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit.
o    Regular updates prevent malicious actors from taking advantage of outdated systems that may have known weaknesses.

If your cloud service allows for automatic updates, enable this feature. For critical systems and applications, ensure that security patches are applied as soon as they become available.

4. Encrypt Sensitive Data

Data encryption is one of the most effective ways to protect your sensitive information, both during transmission and when stored in the cloud. Even if an attacker gains access to your cloud storage, encrypted data will be unreadable without the corresponding decryption key.

    Best practices for encryption:

o    Use end-to-end encryption to ensure data is protected at all stages—whether it’s being uploaded, downloaded, or stored.
o    If your cloud provider doesn’t offer built-in encryption, consider using third-party encryption tools to protect sensitive files.
o    Always encrypt data before sending it over unsecured networks.

Remember, not all data needs to be encrypted, but any personal, financial, or business-critical information should be safeguarded with encryption.

5. Limit Access and Permissions

One of the easiest ways to reduce security risks is to control who has access to your cloud resources. Implement the principle of least privilege, meaning users should only have access to the data and tools necessary for their specific tasks. Regularly review and update user roles and permissions to ensure that they align with current needs.

•    Key strategies for limiting access:

o    Assign different levels of access based on user roles (e.g., administrator, user, guest).
o    Regularly audit access logs to detect any suspicious activity or unauthorized access attempts.
o    Use identity and access management (IAM) tools to help enforce strict access policies.

By limiting unnecessary access, you can minimize the potential for data leaks, malicious insider actions, and unauthorized modifications to your cloud systems.

6. Back Up Your Data Regularly

Data loss can occur for a variety of reasons, including accidental deletion, system failures, or cyberattacks. To ensure that your data is safe, you should implement regular backup practices. Cloud services often offer automated backup features, but it’s essential to verify that backups are happening on schedule and that the data is recoverable in case of emergencies.

•    Best practices for backups:

o    Set up automated, regular backups (daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the criticality of the data).
o    Use a multi-cloud strategy by backing up your data in more than one cloud environment to avoid vendor-specific risks.
o    Regularly test your backups to ensure you can restore data quickly if needed.

Having secure, up-to-date backups will provide peace of mind in case of data loss or corruption.

7. Monitor and Log Cloud Activity

Continuous monitoring is crucial for identifying potential security threats early. Cloud service providers often offer activity logging features that record every action taken within the environment, including user logins, file access, and administrative changes.

•    Why monitoring is important:

o    Logs can help detect suspicious activities like unauthorized access attempts or unusual file transfers.
o    Regularly reviewing logs can help you spot vulnerabilities before they are exploited by attackers.
o    Automated alerting systems can notify you of potential security incidents in real-time.

By setting up monitoring tools and reviewing logs regularly, you can catch security issues before they escalate into major problems.

8. Educate and Train Users on Security Best Practices

Even with the best security technologies in place, human error is often the weakest link in cloud security. Phishing attacks, weak password practices, and inadequate understanding of security policies can all lead to significant vulnerabilities.

•    Security training for employees and users:

o    Conduct regular security awareness training for all users, teaching them about common threats like phishing, social engineering, and password hygiene.
o    Create clear security guidelines and encourage users to follow them consistently.
o    Ensure that employees understand the potential impact of security breaches on the organization.

Training is a proactive measure that helps to instill a security-first mindset and reduce the chances of breaches caused by avoidable mistakes.

Conclusion

The cloud is an indispensable part of modern computing, offering businesses and individuals a wide range of benefits. However, with its many advantages come significant security risks. By adopting these essential cloud security practices, users can better protect their data, minimize the risks of cyberattacks, and ensure the safety of their cloud environments. Strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, data encryption, and proper access control are just a few of the critical practices every user must follow to secure their cloud-based resources.

As the digital landscape evolves, so too must our approach to cloud security. Staying informed and vigilant is the key to maintaining a secure and trustworthy cloud environment.

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Storm-1977 Hits Education Clouds with AzureChecker, Deploys 200+ Crypto Mining Containers

Microsoft has revealed that a threat actor it tracks as Storm-1977 has conducted password spraying attacks against cloud tenants in the education sector over the past year.
“The attack involves the use of AzureChecker.exe, a Command Line Interface (CLI) tool that is being used by a wide range of threat actors,” the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in an analysis.
The tech giant noted that

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A Comprehensive Review of BlackFog’s ADX Platform for Ransomware Defense

The evolving ransomware landscape and the growing threat of data exfiltration. 

Ransomware is more than just a cyberthreat—in recent years it has evolved into a major societal crisis. A single successful attack can disrupt essential services, destabilize local economies, and cause cascading effects across entire communities. A notable example was the 2021 attack on Colonial Pipeline, where a single ransomware incident triggered panic buying, widespread fuel shortages, and a spike in gas prices across the East Coast of the United States. This incident made ransomware mainstream news and, what was once viewed as an IT issue, suddenly became a national emergency—proving that cybercrime can touch every corner of society.

Since that wake-up call, ransomware attacks have not only increased in frequency and scale, but they’ve also become more strategically targeted. Hospitals have been forced to cancel surgeries and redirect ambulances, while school systems have been forced to shut down operations for days or even weeks, leaving parents scrambling for childcare and students without access to education. In some cases, local governments have been unable to issue pay checks, manage utilities, or provide emergency services—putting vulnerable populations at even greater risk. Even supermarket supply chains have been disrupted, leading to shortages of food, medicines, and essential goods.

In 2025, the threat is escalating further with experts predicting a sharp rise in attacks against critical infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, transportation systems, and energy providers. These sectors are not only essential for daily life—they are also historically under-protected and increasingly interconnected, making them prime targets for exploitation. Perhaps the biggest concern is that attackers are no longer simply locking systems and encrypting data—they are now focused on exfiltrating data and using extortion tactics to threaten public exposure, regulatory fines, and reputational ruin. Disturbingly, the rate of data exfiltration in publicized attacks is now 95%. For organisations to address this threat, a shift toward proactive threat prevention, especially around data exfiltration, is critical. 

Introduction to BlackFog’s platform and its pioneering on-device ADX technology

BlackFog takes a revolutionary approach to the problem of ransomware and extortion with its innovative anti data exfiltration (ADX) technology—shifting the focus from perimeter defense to monitoring data movement to ensure no unauthorized data can be removed. Instead of just detecting intrusions, BlackFog’s AI-driven ADX technology prevents cybercriminals from exfiltrating data, effectively neutralizing threats in real-time.

This proactive, AI-based solution provides 24/7 protection without requiring human intervention, unlike most cybersecurity tools today. By blocking unauthorized data transfers, BlackFog ensures that ransomware attacks are stopped before they can cause any damage.

Key Features: A breakdown BlackFog’s standout capabilities in blocking data exfiltration

BlackFog’s multi-layered approach has been meticulously designed to minimize the impact of ransomware. 

  • Proactive Blocking: By preventing unauthorized data loss in real-time, BlackFog stops ransomware attacks as well as communication with C2 servers. 
  • AI-Driven Threat Analysis: Advanced artificial intelligence monitors network behavior for anomalies, intercepting malicious activity before it can escalate into a full-blown attack. Its algorithms have been trained against all existing variants and automatically adapt to new zero day attack techniques. 
  • On-Device Protection: Offers continuous monitoring without reliance on external databases or cloud services.
  • Real-Time Geofencing: Every data packet’s destination is analyzed to detect and block unauthorized transfers outside defined geofence boundaries and lateral movement within the network.
  • Air Gap Protection: A cutting-edge feature that ensures all outgoing data passes through AI-based detection, stopping unauthorized communications entirely.

With these integrated capabilities, BlackFog offers enterprises a robust, proactive defense against ransomware, significantly reducing risks and ensuring business continuity.

Stopping Ransomware at the Source: BlackFog’s preventative approach

BlackFog prevents ransomware and safeguards data through a multi-layered, prevention-first cybersecurity approach that focuses on data exfiltration prevention. BlackFog’s ADX technology filters network traffic in real-time and operates on layer 3 of the OSI stack. Using advanced AI-based algorithms, it stops cyberattacks and prevents the exfiltration of data from a device, protecting trade secrets, personally identifiable information (PII), data theft, and extortion.

Competitive Advantage: How BlackFog’s ADX technology stands out in preventing data loss and extortion

While many cybersecurity solutions focus on detecting and responding to ransomware after an attack has begun, BlackFog takes a fundamentally different, and more effective, approach by stopping attacks at the point of data exfiltration. BlackFog uses behavioral profiling and outbound data monitoring to prevent cybercriminals from extracting data from devices in real-time. This means even if malware bypasses traditional defenses, it cannot achieve its objective—stealing data for ransom and extortion. With multiple layers of defense and zero reliance on cloud processing or third-party data sharing, BlackFog delivers lightweight, privacy-first protection that neutralizes the financial and operational incentives behind ransomware. By cutting off the attacker’s ability to profit, BlackFog effectively renders these threats powerless—a strategic advantage that sets it apart from reactive solutions on the market.

Conclusion: BlackFog delivers comprehensive ransomware defense with ADX and the future of data security

As pioneers of Anti Data Exfiltration (ADX), BlackFog distinguishes itself in the cybersecurity landscape by providing a new paradigm in the fight against ransomware. Rather than focusing on defense like most other cybersecurity products, BlackFog focuses on what really matters; the data itself. BlackFog’s innovative approach challenges the status quo. By focussing on preventing data exfiltration, cybercriminals have nothing to extort you with and nothing they can trade with third parties. 

By using the latest AI based algorithms refined over many years BlackFog prevents more than 99% of all ransomware. More importantly, it protects organizations from the latest AI based attacks, and threats that are yet to be developed based around a zero trust and zero day strategy.

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About BlackFog

Founded in 2015, BlackFog is a global AI based cybersecurity company that has pioneered on-device anti data exfiltration (ADX) technology to protect organizations from ransomware and data loss. With more than 94% of all attacks involving some form of data exfiltration, preventing this has become critical in the fight against extortion, the loss of customer data and trade secrets.

BlackFog recently won the “Best Threat Intelligence Technology” in the 2024 Teiss Awards, “AI-based Cybersecurity Innovation of the Year” award in the CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards, as well as the 2024 Fortress Data Protection award for its pioneering ADX technology. BlackFog also won Gold at the Globee awards in 2024 for best Data Loss Prevention and the State of Ransomware report which recognizes outstanding contributions in securing the digital landscape.

Trusted by hundreds of organizations all over the world, BlackFog is redefining modern cybersecurity practices. For more information visit blackfog.com.

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Why Managed File Transfer (MFT) Is Essential for Autonomous IT Operations

Technology teams are under more pressure than ever to deliver measurable business success. In practice, this means supporting hybrid computing and fostering robust security controls across the entire infrastructure estate, reducing disruptions and downtime and establishing a backbone for autonomous IT.

The risks of not being protected are real. In 2024, the UK Government Cyber Security Breaches Survey revealed that 50% of UK businesses had suffered a cyberattack or security breach in the previous 12 months.

With the constantly growing need to access and share data, safe and secure data transfer has become essential to enterprise operations. Against this background, managed file transfer (MFT) couldn’t be more important. Yet far from being purely an agent for moving files, MFT plays a key role in enhancing security, supporting compliance, reducing disruptions and paving the way for autonomous IT operations—ultimately helping to keep an organisation’s data more secure.

However, as CISOs wear many hats in their role, staying abreast of data transfer strategies can be a challenge. For those with homegrown, open-source and outdated file transfer methods, this can lead to costly implications and potential non-compliance.

The Biggest Challenges for Organisations to Store and Share Data Securely

When it comes to data exchanges, the primary challenges are data security and compliance. While many organisations are legally required to safeguard their data to comply with Payment Card Industry (PCI-DSS) and General Data Protection Act (GDPR) regulations, others grasp the need to mitigate the risks associated with data transfer activities and implement measures to enhance their security strategy for protecting sensitive data.

With ever-changing risks and regulatory factors, vendor management as it relates to managed file transfer solutions is vital for data exchange activities to meet the requirements of the organisation. More countries and states are mandating data security measures to help protect personal information. And the consequences of non-compliance are costly—both financially and reputationally.

Aggregating needs for encryption, user access controls and integrating compliance-driven logging and reporting requirements can seem like complex tasks. In addition, CISOs must navigate file transfer complexities across cloud environments and microservices—IT architectures that continue to evolve as they search for that “perfect balance” of flexibility, scalability, cost efficiency and data sovereignty. A mix of on-premises and cloud infrastructure systems and edge devices has become the norm.

Without the right defences, disruptions to business continuity are almost inevitable. Both minor errors and major outages can harm relationships with customers, partners and the public.

The Essential Role MFT Plays in the Move to Autonomous IT Operations

Today, progressive IT leaders are looking for solutions beyond basic task automation; they are seeking file transfer orchestration to handle more complex scenarios without human intervention.

As tech leaders faced an increasing complexity of data transfers and security and compliance requirements, the vendor marketplace responded to the needs of organisations by introducing automation and cloud offerings. By leveraging managed file transfer automation capabilities, such as workflow automation and automatic file transfers along with cloud deployment options, organisations can now extend their digital transformation initiatives to their file transfer activities. Managed file transfer is essential for protecting an organisation’s data in IT transformation.

Self-sufficient workflows are vital for enterprises aiming to achieve new levels of operational efficiency. Automating manual processes, including file transfers, has been a function of MFT solutions for years. However, by building advanced, logic-based workflows, MFT solutions can respond to real-time triggers, maintain timely delivery and notify teams about transfer status and outcomes, enabling enterprises to embrace increasingly autonomous IT operations.

The Benefits of MFT

By simplifying file transfer automation, CIOs can reduce operational overhead and improve IT efficiency. Benefits include reducing disruption and outages, harnessing hybrid computing, elevating security posture and supporting compliance.

To mitigate the risk of disruptions, more enterprises will invest in redundancy for mission-critical workflows. Automated failover, disaster recovery and high availability/web farm deployments are essential to reduce single points of failure, allowing for more resilient file transfer operations.

MFT serves as the connective tissue in an enterprise’s ecosystem of disparate systems. With the rising popularity of hybrid cloud strategies, it is critical for organisations to be able to transfer files to internal and external stakeholders, irrespective of the platform stakeholders are using and through various desktop, mobile and web applications. 

Depending on the environments involved, files could traverse Windows endpoints, Linux-based servers or mainframes running in their data centres or private and public cloud endpoints in AWS, Azure or Google cloud environments. Each organisation is unique and this complexity must be considered for file transfer workflows across departments and businesses.

For global enterprises or businesses handling personal health information (PHI), personal financial and other sensitive information, the security of data before, during and after an exchange can be bolstered with the right file transfer solution. MFT’s strong authentication, encryption and access controls align with zero-trust security models and compliance standards.

As organisations continue to bolster their data governance frameworks, there is likely to be a significant rise in the importance of audit trails and reporting capabilities. This could lead to more rigorous limitations on data storage practices, ultimately phasing out non-archive systems for sensitive data management.

Key Considerations for Choosing an Effective MFT Solution

There are some key features of an MFT solution that enable CISOs to prioritise their optimisation of data security and workflow efficiency:

  • Security and compliance: To enhance security, tech pros should look for a solution that has 256-bit AES encryption, two-factor authentication and software that can help their business comply with regulations like PCI and GDPR. Automatic data retention policies, detailed audit trails and user access controls are also important for companies that need to maintain compliance.
  • Ease of use: The secure file transfer solution should be intuitive and easy to implement, with minimal training required for administrators and management. Simple to use drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built connectors for existing systems and access to 24/7 support are also important.
  • Scalability: It’s important to choose a platform that can grow with the business. This means one that offers scalable storage options that can accommodate increasing transaction volumes. The ability to create separate accounts, user groups and permissions for various departments is also key for larger organisations.
  • Advanced features: For enhanced functionality, it’s best to look for features like audit trails, reporting dashboards, automation/scheduling tools and API integrations with other business software, such as CRM or ERP systems. Some solutions offer add-on modules for electronic data interchange (EDI), ad-hoc file sharing and business-to-business workflows.

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