Google X Is Launching a Cybersecurity Company Called Chronicle (techcrunch.com)

Google's parent company Alphabet today announced the launch of Chronicle, a new cybersecurity company that aims to give companies a better chance at detecting and fighting off hackers. "Chronicle is graduating out of Alphabet's X moonshot group and is now a standalone company under the Alphabet umbrella, just like Google," TechCrunch reports. From the report: Stephen Gillett, who joined X from Google Ventures and was previously the COO of Symantec, will be the new company's CEO. To get started, Chronicle will offer two services: a security intelligence and analytics platform for enterprises, and VirusTotal, the online malware and virus scanner that Google acquired in 2012. Gillett writes that the general idea behind Chronicle is to eliminate a company's security blind spots and allow businesses to get a better picture of their security posture. "We want to 10x the speed and impact of security teams' work by making it much easier, faster and more cost-effective for them to capture and analyze security signals that have previously been too difficult and expensive to find," writes Gillett. "We are building our intelligence and analytics platform to solve this problem."

What exactly this new platform will look like remains to be seen, though. Gillett notes that it will run on Alphabet's infrastructure and use machine learning and advanced search capabilities to help businesses analyze their security data. Chronicle also says that it will offer its services in the cloud so that they can "grow with an organization's needs and don't add yet another piece of security software to implement and manage."

Comments

We want to improve your security

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do is give us total access to your sweet, sweet data, and agree that we can use it for our own purposes.

Re:We want to improve your security

[MrL0G1C]

And google don't have a fucking clue what a hacker is, for them, anyone who uses VPN must be some kind of hacker judging by the crap they throw at me in the form of horribly annoying captchas. Never mind that I'm logged in to gmail and youtube FFS.

Moonshot?

[klingens]

What kind of moonshot leads to yet another run of the mill security company?
What's the special sauce that is moonshot worthy enough? The moonshot program from Google started with "we do crazy/fun things that are totally out there but could just maybe become a real service or product one day" Like Internet from balloons or modular cellphones, etc.
A new security company service is nothing out there. There are tons of those just with less name recognition than Google.

Re:Moonshot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's a moonshot, so it's about 50 years old....

Re:Moonshot?

[AHuxley]

Whats going to be found? Code litter that a security service wanted to be found? The security services are in the system but the NSL.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... changes everything.
The sale of an another US cloud product? A really big new and really good firewall? US junk encryption in the US cloud?

Good security needs experts in house who understand their own system. Hire on merit to protect internal networks.
Find experts in another nation who are not going to be blocked by a NSL. They are free to report early and often on what they find in any US system.
No having to watch data walk while some US agency and investigation try to observe what the interesting people are doing in a network for months.
Find a real security company that finds problems, offers solutions to the company. Dont risk experts that have to stop work for a NSL

Re:Moonshot?

[lgw]

What kind of moonshot leads to yet another run of the mill security company?

Seriously. And who on their right mind would install any product contaminated by Symantec? Has the geek world forgotten Norton AV? Never forget!

Re:Moonshot?

[rtb61]

The best network security, how does does it take to discover the attack and reach for the off switch. Not just any off switch but the appropriate, off switch. Detect a hack, with an approved device, the device reports it to network provider and the attack source it cut off from the internet and the normal investigation and prosecution commence where applicable. It does required secured, standardised, network hardware, they will track and report attacks, this not upon an individual basis but upon a shared network basis. Every piece of network kit in the internet works together to rapidly detect and report attacks, and the most appropriate bit of network kit, then traces and shuts down the connection. Done globally great but agreement extremely unlikely but you can do it nationally and extended it with treaties, and AI smart secured network, think bug like smart ie it can hunt and terminate bad connections. Once the connection is dead, in current and in future terms, future connections are denied, you can reconfigure purely secured computer hardware and software.

Can we stop the silly name-splaining?

[93 Escort Wagon]

- Google chose to rebrand and reorganize as Alphabet. When we're talking about Alphabet, isn't it about time we just say "Alphabet" not "Google's parent company Alphabet"?

- Stop referring to "X" as "Google X". It hasn't been "Google X" since Google did the whole silly rebrand. The parent company is Alphabet; so if you have to append something call it "Alphabet X". Yes, it does sound stupid - live with it.

I'm aware that all the rebrand did is muddy the waters for everybody... but it's been more than two years now. We're far enough along that there's no real point in wasting words re-explaining it. Just use the goofy names these engineers came up with, snicker if you must, and move on.

Re:Can we stop the silly name-splaining?

[KiloByte]

No one without a reason to watch the newest tax shell game even knows what Alphabet is -- or at most had overheard this somewhere. For the rest of us, Google is Google, period. Even Google employees probably have no clue which shell owns them this week.

Re:Can we stop the silly name-splaining?

[MrL0G1C]

I agree with KB, they're Google, they were Google before, they are Google now. Shouldn't even bother with the A-Z thing.

Analyze security signals?

[AHuxley]

That data flow out to the security services .....
PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Holy Resident Evil, Batman!

[BlueStrat]

"Chronicle is graduating out of Alphabet's X moonshot group and is now a standalone company under the Alphabet umbrella, just like Google," TechCrunch reports.

And so Umbrella Corp. was born in the year 2018, dooming humanity as we know it.

Strat

NIST 800-171

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Give me some templates and apps that help with 800-171 compliance, and I'd be happy hahaha

Sigh..

[fubarrr]

What it is with those guys coming out with such retarded names for their companies?

Re:Sigh..

[hcs_$reboot]

Google, big fan of Apple, chose Google X when they first heard about that new Apple project, a rough draft at the time, iPhone X. Then they opted for that other name after reading "Chronicle of magnificence and decadence of a smartphone product line".

Point Counterpoint

[Templer421]

The Good: Detecting problems by having a massive sample of malware and attack methods.

The Bad: Do you REALLY trust Google to not use the information against both its friends AND enemies?

Re:Point Counterpoint

[Reverend Green]

Do you REALLY trust Google to not use the information against both its friends AND enemies?

No one trusts Google anymore. That ship has sailed.

Re:Point Counterpoint

[phiwoo]

There is nothing wrong with Google. It is with the governing bodies. Google just provides an amazing service and it should be appreciated.

Re: Point Counterpoint

[Reverend Green]

Are you on crack?