Google Parent Company Alphabet Unveils Cybersecurity Software Unit, Chronicle, Out of its X Moonshot Factory

Alphabet Inc launched a new business unit, dubbed Chronicle, on Wednesday that will sell cyber security software to Fortune 500 companies, the latest move by the parent of Google to become a big player in corporate computing.

According to a blog post from Chronicle’s CEO Stephen Gillett, Chronicle is an enterprise platform that will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to “help enterprises better manage and understand their own security-related data.” The company will also include VirusTotal, the malware analytics company that Google acquired in 2012. Mr. Gillett was quoted on TechCrunch.

Gillett, also a former Starbucks Corp chief information officer, said Chronicle aims to identify problems in seconds or minutes instead of hours or days. The process would be aided by lowering customers’ data storage costs. Keeping years of logs can make the threat-detection process more effective, he added.

Further details on the project are still thin, but Gillett said early alpha versions of the product have already been tested at a number of Fortune 500 companies, The Verge reported.

Chronicle, based at Alphabet’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, becomes the third business spun out of the company’s ‘X’ research lab and into the holding company – a process it calls ‘graduating.’ It follows healthcare unit Verily and self-driving vehicle company Waymo. Alphabet has also acquired companies that operate under its umbrella, including thermostat maker Nest.

Astro Teller, the head of X known as the ‘captain of moonshoots,’ said his team pursued cyber security technology after noticing that cyber attacks had become a ‘yeah, yeah’ problem, as in, “Yeah, yeah, a lot of people have diabetes, there are things to manage it.” “The real moonshot, which is still several years away, is predicting and deflecting cyber attacks before they infiltrate an organization’s network,” Teller said in a blog post.