Amazon Web Services updates RDS and GuardDuty database features

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced new features for its Relational Database Service (RDS) and GuardDuty security service to improve database management and protection.

Amazon RDS for Oracle now includes a minor version upgrade precheck capability. This allows users to run read-only checks for potential upgrade blockers, such as insufficient storage or invalid triggers, before a scheduled maintenance window. Additionally, a new event notification (RDS-EVENT-0596) will signal when a database instance is accepting connections again during patching, allowing applications to reconnect while remaining maintenance tasks continue in the background.

Separately, Amazon GuardDuty has expanded its RDS Protection capabilities. The service now utilizes machine learning-based anomaly detection to identify data exfiltration and destruction attempts targeting Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. This feature monitors query patterns to establish behavioral baselines, helping to detect malicious activity that may mimic legitimate application behavior without requiring additional infrastructure or agent installations.