Enabling External Web Access for Web Search on Amazon Bedrock
Amazon Bedrock's Web Search now allows retrieval of content directly from the public web, with an option to keep processing within AWS boundaries
Amazon Bedrock's Web Search now supports an external_web_access parameter that allows retrieval of content directly from the public web. To enable this, grant the bedrock-websearch:ExternalWebAccess IAM permission to the request identity and leave the parameter at its default value of true. This enables live fetching of content from the public web for use cases requiring the freshest information, such as sports scores, live pricing, or newly released documentation. For sensitive data, setting external_web_access to false keeps retrieval entirely within AWS, using only Amazon's in-AWS web index and knowledge graph with no data egress. This feature is currently available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon) regions.
Why it matters
Amazon Bedrock provides capabilities for grounding foundation models with current information. The expansion of Web Search allows developers to directly access public web content