Google gets new sister company focused on security analytics

Alphabet launches new X-developed security business ‘Chronicle’

X — the ‘moonshot factory’ of Google parent company Alphabet — has graduated a new business focused on improving enterprise information security by leveraging machine learning.

Chronicle will give organisations “a much higher-resolution view of their security situation than they’ve ever had by combining machine learning, large amounts of computing power and large amounts of storage,” Astro Teller, X’s ‘Captain of Moonshots’, wrote in a blog entry.

“The information that security teams need to identify and investigate attacks is right there in an organization’s existing security tools and IT systems, but it’s hidden in enormous volumes of data and therefore can’t easily be seen, understood, or used.”

The X project that became Chronicle was originally stood up in February 2016.

Chronicle CEO Stephen Gillett said the business had two parts: “a new cybersecurity intelligence and analytics platform that we hope can help enterprises better manage and understand their own security-related data” and VirusTotal, the online malware scanning tool that Google acquired in 2012.

In a blog entry Gillett wrote that Chronicle would employ Alphabet’s compute and storage infrastructure to make it easier for enterprises to retain and analyse vast amounts of data thanks to cloud-based services.

“Add in some machine learning and better search capabilities, and we think we’ll be able to help organizations see their full security picture in much higher fidelity than they currently can,” Gillett wrote

“We hope that by making this mix of technologies available to more companies at affordable prices, we can give ‘the good guys’ an advantage and help us all turn the tide against cybercrime.”

Chronicle is the third X-developed project to be spun out into an independent entity under the Alphabet umbrella.

Waymo, which focuses on self-driving-car technology, launched in late 2016. Life sciences company Verily launched in August 2015.

Last year X announced the relaunch of Google Glass with a focus on enterprises.

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