Chronicle is developing an intelligence and analytics platform to help businesses better manage and make sense of their cybersecurity data.
Google parent Alphabet on Wednesday announced the formation of a new independent cybersecurity business called Chronicle.
Born in the web giant's X moonshot factory in 2016, Chronicle is "dedicated to helping companies find and stop cyber attacks before they cause harm," the company's CEO, Stephen Gillett, a former Symantec executive, wrote in a blog post. Chronicle is developing an intelligence and analytics platform to help businesses better manage and make sense of their cybersecurity data.
"Thousands of potential clues about hacking activity are overlooked or thrown away each day," Gillett wrote. "At large companies, it's not uncommon for IT systems to generate tens of thousands of security alerts a day. Security teams can usually filter these down to about a few thousand they think are worth investigating—but in a day's work, they're lucky if they can review a few hundred of them."
At the same time, he wrote, "many investigations are hampered by the gaps in available information, simply because the cost of storing all the relevant data is increasing far faster than a typical organization's budget."
Enter Chronicle's intelligence and analytics platform, which aims to help solve these issues and enable security teams to more quickly identify hackers in their networks. Chronicle is currently testing this platform with "a number of Fortune 500 companies" as part of an early Alpha program.
Chronicle also includes VirusTotal, the malware intelligence service Google acquired in 2012. VirusTotal will continue to operate as normal.
Meanwhile, Alphabet's announcement comes just ahead of Data Privacy Day, an international effort that takes place annually on Jan. 28 to promote privacy and data protection best practices.