AWS posted at 23:00 UTC on 19 August that Web Search on Amazon Bedrock has gained an external_web_access parameter, letting the built-in server-side search tool fetch content live from the public internet rather than only from Amazon's in-AWS web index. The parameter's default value is true.

What the page says

To enable it, AWS instructs customers to grant the bedrock-websearch:ExternalWebAccess IAM permission to the request identity and "leave the external_web_access parameter at its default of true." With it on, Web Search "can then fetch content live from the public web for use cases that need the freshest possible information, such as latest sports score, live pricing, or newly released documentation." With it off, "Web Search serves results only from Amazon's in-AWS web index and knowledge graph, with no request data leaving the AWS boundary."

What the common telling gets wrong — in both directions

This will be written up as a capability story: Bedrock agents can now search the live web. That misses the point. Web Search shipped earlier this month marketed on grounding responses "while maintaining data within your secured AWS environment with zero data egress" — and the configuration delivering that property is now the one you have to opt into. False is the opt-out.

The opposite reading is equally available and equally wrong. AWS did not silently switch anyone's traffic to the open web. There are two gates: the IAM permission has to be granted to the calling identity before the parameter default has any effect at all. An account that never grants bedrock-websearch:ExternalWebAccess is unchanged. The exposure sits with organisations that grant the permission broadly and assume the parameter is conservatively defaulted.

Three regions, not everywhere

External web access is available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio) and US West (Oregon). A companion AgentCore search item published five minutes earlier lists a different regional footprint including Europe and Asia Pacific — different feature, different availability, and the two should not be merged.

The compliance shape has changed

Bedrock's core enterprise argument against calling a model vendor directly is the data boundary. A regulated buyer who signed off on Web Search reading "nothing leaves AWS" now has a control whose default runs the other way, and the compliance artefact has moved from an account-level setting to a per-request parameter — something an auditor has to find in application code rather than in a console.