Today marks the start of AWS re:Inforce 2025, where security professionals are gathering for three days of technical learning sessions, workshops, and demonstrations. This security-focused conference brings together AWS security specialists who build and maintain the services that organizations rely on for their cloud security needs.
AWS Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Amy Herzog will deliver the conference keynote along with guest speakers who will share new security capabilities and implementation insights. The event offers multiple learning paths with sessions designed for various technical roles and expertise levels. Many of my colleagues from across AWS are leading hands-on workshops, demonstrating new security features, and facilitating community discussions. For those unable to join us in Philadelphia, the keynote and innovation talks will be viewable by livestream during the event, and available to watch on demand after the event. Look out for the key announcements and technical insights from the conference in upcoming posts!
Let’s look at last week’s new announcements.
Last week’s launches
Here are the launches that got my attention.
Extend Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins with MCP tools – Amazon Q Developer now supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) in its integrated development environment (IDE) plugins, helping developers integrate external tools for enhanced contextual development workflows. You can now augment the built-in tools with any MCP server that supports the stdio transport layer. These servers can be managed within the Amazon Q Developer user interface. This makes it easy to add, remove, and modify tool permissions. The integration enables more customized responses by orchestrating tasks across both native and MCP server-based tools. MCP support is available in Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDE plugins, as well as in the Amazon Q Developer command line interface (CLI), with detailed documentation and implementation guides available in the Amazon Q Developer documentation.
AWS WAF now supports automatic application layer DDoS protection – AWS has enhanced its application layer (L7) distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection capabilities with faster automatic detection and mitigation that responds to events within seconds. This AWS Managed Rules group automatically detects and mitigates DDoS attacks of any duration to keep applications running on Amazon CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, and other AWS WAF supported services available to users. The system establishes a baseline within minutes of activation using machine learning (ML) models to detect traffic anomalies, then automatically applies rules to address suspicious requests. Configuration options help you customize responses such as presenting challenges or blocking requests. The feature is available to all AWS WAF and AWS Shield Advanced subscribers in all supported AWS Regions, except Asia Pacific (Thailand), Mexico (Central), and China (Beijing and Ningxia). To learn more about AWS WAF application layer (L7) DDoS protection, visit the AWS WAF documentation or the AWS WAF console.
AWS Control Tower now supports service-linked AWS Config managed AWS Config rules – AWS Control Tower now deploys service-linked AWS Config rules directly in managed accounts, replacing the previous CloudFormation StackSets deployment method. This change improves deployment speed when enabling service-linked AWS Config rules across multiple AWS Control Tower managed accounts and Regions. These service-linked rules are managed entirely by AWS services and can’t be edited or deleted by users. This helps maintain consistency and prevent configuration drift. AWS Control Tower Config rules detect resource noncompliance within accounts and provide alerts through the dashboard. You can deploy these controls using the AWS Control Tower console or AWS Control Tower control APIs.
Powertools for AWS Lambda introduces Bedrock Agents Function utility – The new Amazon Bedrock Agents Function utility in Powertools for AWS Lambda simplifies building serverless applications integrated with Amazon Bedrock Agents. This utility helps developers create AWS Lambda functions that respond to Amazon Bedrock Agents action requests with built-in parameter injection and response formatting, eliminating boilerplate code. The utility seamlessly integrates with other Powertools features like Logger and Metrics, making it easier to build production-ready AI applications. This integration improves the developer experience when building agent-based solutions that use AWS Lambda functions to process actions requested by Amazon Bedrock Agents. The utility is available in Python, TypeScript, and .NET versions of Powertools.
Announcing open sourcing pgactive: active-active replication extension for PostgreSQL – Pgactive is a PostgreSQL extension that enables asynchronous active-active replication for streaming data between database instances, and AWS has made it open source. This extension provides additional resiliency and flexibility for moving data between instances, including writers located in different Regions. It helps maintain availability during operations like switching write traffic. Building on PostgreSQL’s logical replication features, pgactive adds capabilities that simplify managing active-active replication scenarios. The open source approach encourages collaboration on developing PostgreSQL’s active-active capabilities while offering features that streamline using PostgreSQL in multi-active instance environments. For more information and implementation guidance, visit the GitHub repository.
For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New at AWS page.
We launched existing services and instance types in additional Regions:
- AWS Glue is now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region – AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that makes it simple to discover, prepare, and combine data for analytics, ML, and application development.
- Amazon EC2 I8g instances are now available in Europe (Ireland) Region – Amazon EC2 I8g instances offer the best performance in Amazon EC2 for storage-intensive workloads.
- Amazon VPC IP Address Manager is now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region – Amazon VPC IPAM makes it easier to plan, track, and monitor IP addresses for AWS workloads.
Other AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events.
AWS GenAI Lofts are collaborative spaces and immersive experiences that showcase AWS expertise in cloud computing and AI. They provide startups and developers with hands-on access to AI products and services, exclusive sessions with industry leaders, and valuable networking opportunities with investors and peers. Find a GenAI Loft location near you and don’t forget to register.
AWS Summits are free online and in-person events that bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Register in your nearest city: Milano (June 18), Shanghai (June 19 – 20), Mumbai (June 19) and Japan (June 25 – 26).
Browse all upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events here.
That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!
This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!