Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) has introduced a new custom compute class API, allowing users to have fine-grained control over their infrastructure choices. This enables GKE to prioritize and utilize a variety of compute and accelerator options based on the user's needs. This feature aims to provide a seamless customer experience by intelligently selecting the best compute resources during peak sales periods.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Google Cloud has expanded its services in Saudi Arabia, offering new data sovereignty, security, and AI capabilities in the Dammam region. The company has partnered with CNTXT to provide Sovereign Controls by CNTXT, which is now generally available through Assured Workloads. This offering is built on Google Cloud's Class V data centers and is designed to help organizations meet digital sovereignty requirements.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Mandiant disclosed a vulnerability to Microsoft via the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) vulnerability disclosure program, which allowed attackers to escalate privileges and access credentials for services used by a vulnerable Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Services cluster. Microsoft has fixed the underlying issue. Attackers could gain access to sensitive information, resulting in data theft, financial loss, reputation harm, and other impacts.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Assured Workloads, a software-defined control package, has introduced Compliance Updates to support ongoing compliance requirements. These updates can enforce data residency, data sovereignty, personnel access restrictions, and more. Controls are applied at the folder level of the Google Cloud resource hierarchy.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

A red team assessment for a major retail company revealed that the client owned its own top-level domain (TLD). The TLD is the last part of a domain name, and companies like Google own many TLDs. The assessment identified the client's TLD in SSL certificates, which included the client's name.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Google Cloud offers a new Managed Service for Apache Kafka, a distributed storage system, which takes care of the high-stakes work of running infrastructure. This service is an alternative to Cloud Pub/Sub, suitable for applications where ease of maintenance or a global resource model are not the deciding factors.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Yahoo benchmarked Dataflow and Apache Flink, finding Dataflow to be 1.5-2 times more cost-effective. The test aimed to achieve similar throughput, with Dataflow processing messages per second as close as possible to Flink. The Enrichment use case required 13x more vCPUs on GKE for Flink compared to Dataflow, due to Dataflow's backend processing.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Google engineers have contributed to official quantum computing standards released by NIST, ISO, and other organizations. The company is working with partners to produce formally-verified PQC implementations. Quantum attacks could break the cryptography used to protect data critical to business services, and organizations should prepare now to avoid potential consequences.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Google Cloud announced the general availability of Service Extensions callouts for Application Load Balancers, allowing customization and extension using gRPC calls. Nine new web delivery partner integrations were launched, including Broadcom's data loss prevention solution. These partners will enhance application security, experience, and observability.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/

Google Cloud has introduced Cloud NAT and Cloud NGFW, distributed cloud-managed network security services that offer a comprehensive network security solution. The integration of Cloud NAT and NGFW allows for granular control of egress traffic, including allowing or denying access based on destination address and ports. A video demo is available, showcasing the ease of configuration and deployment in a cloud environment.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/