Google launches cyber security company

Google’s parent company Alphabet has announced it is launched a cyber security company that will be fuelled by technology from its research and development programme, also known as X.

The new company, Chronicle, will provide a service to companies that gives them a comprehensive overview of their current online security outlook. It will then run through any vulnerabilities, solutions or improvements using Google’s strengths in machine learning, cloud computing and online storage.

Chronicle has been described by the tech giant as one of its “Other Bets” subsidiaries, putting it alongside projects like self-driving cars division Waymo or life sciences group Verily.

The new company was first formed in 2016 when Stephen Gillett, formerly COO at Symantec and executive-in-residence at Google Ventures, met Google security engineers Mike Wiacek and Shapor Naghibzadeh. The trio then began building tools that aimed to give businesses insight into the constantly changing cybersecurity threats emerging online.

They then were introduced to Bernado Quintero, founder of malware intelligence service VirusTotal, which Google acquired in 2012.

Gillett now serves as CEO of Chronicle which is described as a “hybrid” company, both a cybersecurity intelligence and analytics service in one container. It also claims that the name Chronicle refers to creating a record that “helps people make sense of something that's happened, how it happened, and why it happened."

Astro Teller, "Captain of Moonshots" in Google’s X development lab, wrote in a blog post that companies are not keeping up with the cyber security demands made of them.

He added: "Organizations deploy dozens of security tools to protect themselves, and their security teams are highly skilled and extremely dedicated, but they can’t keep up with the growing number, sophistication and ambition of attacks.

"Solving this problem isn’t simply a question of time and trusting that we’ll catch up eventually. We have to start fresh and look at the problem from new angles."