Black Cat Security

Happy New Year! As we kick off 2023, I wanted to take a moment to remind you of some 2023 predictions by AWS leaders for you to help prepare for the new year.

• Five Tech Predictions for 2023 and Beyond by Dr. Wener Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com – Read how these technologies and trends will converge to help solve some of the hardest human problems.
• Six Security Predictions in 2023 and Beyond by CJ Moses, CISO of Amazon Web Services – Learn about what we think is next for the security industry and some high-level pointers on how you can stay ahead.

You can also read the nine best things Amazon announced and AWS for Automotive at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023 in the last week to see the latest offerings from Amazon and AWS that are helping innovate at speed and create new customer experiences at the forefront of technology.

Last Year-End Launches
We skipped two weeks since the last week in review on December 19, 2022. I want to pick some important launches from them.

• AWS IoT Core support for Protocol Protobuf – You can now decode Protobuf encoded messages, a popular messaging format among IoT customers in industries to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format using the AWS IoT Core Rules Engine without the need to invoke a Lambda function to decode them.
• Reserved Nodes for Amazon MemoryDB for Redis – Reserved nodes allow you to save up to 55 percent over On-Demand node prices in exchange for a usage commitment over a one- or three-year term. Reserved nodes are complementary to MemoryDB On-Demand nodes and give businesses flexibility to help reduce costs.
• Amazon Connect Updates – We added lots of features such as supporting Microsoft Edge Chromium browser and JSON content-type in chat messages, allowing contact center managers to join ongoing calls, setting up chat timeouts for auto close of idle chats, showing message receipts within the chat experience, and expanding DID and Toll-free numbers available in six more countries.

Last Week’s Launches
As usual, let’s take a look at some launches from the last week that I want to remind you of:

• Amazon S3 Encrypts New Objects by Default – Amazon S3 encrypts all new objects by default. Now, S3 automatically applies server-side encryption (SSE-S3) for each new object, unless you specify a different encryption option. There is no additional cost for default object-level encryption.
• Amazon Aurora MySQL Version 3 Backtrack Support – Backtrack allows you to move your MySQL 8.0 compatible Aurora database to a prior point in time without needing to restore from a backup, and it completes within seconds, even for large databases.
• Amazon EMR Serverless Custom Images – Amazon EMR Serverless now allows you to customize images for Apache Spark and Hive. This means that you can package application dependencies or custom code in the image, simplifying running Spark and Hive workloads.
• The Graph Explorer, Open-Source Low-Code Visual Exploration Tool – Amazon Neptune announced the graph-explorer, a React-based web application that enables users to visualize both property graph and Resource Description Framework (RDF) data and explore connections between data without having to write graph queries. To learn more about open source updates at AWS, see Ricardo’s OSS newsletter.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New at AWS page.

Other AWS News
Here are some other news items that you may find interesting in the new year:

• AWS Collective on Stack Overflow – Please join the AWS Collective on Stack Overflow, which provides builders a curated space to engage and learn from this large developer’s community.
• AWS Fundamentals Book – This upcoming AWS online book is intended to focus on AWS usage in the real world, and goes deeper with amazing per-service infographics.
• AWS Security Events Workshops – AWS Customer Incident Response Team (CIRT) release five real-world workshops that simulate security events, such as server-side request forgery, ransomware, and cryptominer-based security events, to help you learn the tools and procedures that AWS CIRT uses.

Upcoming AWS Events
Check your calendars and sign up for these AWS events in the new year:

• AWS Builders Online Series on January 18 – This online conference is designed for you to learn core AWS concepts, and step-by-step architectural best practices, including demonstrations to help you get started and accelerate your success on AWS.
• AWS Community Day Singapore on January 28 – Come and join AWS User Group Singapore’s first AWS Community Day, a community-led conference for AWS users. See Events for Developers to learn about developer events hosted by AWS and the AWS Community.
• AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials Day in January and February – This online workshop provides a detailed overview of cloud concepts, AWS services, security, architecture, pricing, and support. This course also helps you prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner examination.

You can browse all upcoming in-person, and virtual events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Week in Review!

— Channy

This post is part of our Week in Review series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!