Amazon Web Services and Google parent Alphabet both made significant cybersecurity moves today. Indeed, Amazon acquired Sqrrl and Alphabet unveiled a security analytics service called Chronicle. The long-term result could be stronger security for AWS and Google Cloud Platform partners and customers.
First up, Amazon acquired Sqrrl -- a software company that "enables security analysts to discover advanced threats faster and reduces the time required to investigate them." Sqrrl is widely referred to as a Threat Hunting Platform. It unites link analysis, machine learning algorithms, and multi-petabyte scalability capabilities into an integrated solution, the company claims.
The AWS-Sqrrl deal had been rumored for several weeks.
Google's New Sister: Alphabet's Chronicle Security Service
Meanwhile, Alphabet pulled back the curtain on Chronicle -- a new security service that empowers customers and partners to "fight cybercrime on a global sale," Alphabet claims.
According to a Chronicle description short on details but long on promises:
"We are building a cybersecurity intelligence platform that can help organizations better manage and understand their own data. Companies already have volumes of information about what’s happening inside their walls. We’re aiming to unlock its valuable hidden insights by making it faster and easier to analyze data, and to look for patterns across sources and over time. We believe this can provide security teams with greater insights into areas of likely vulnerability, and give them time to protect themselves."
Chronicle is led by CEO and Co-Founder Stephen Gillett -- a Google Ventures veteran. Prior to joining Google, Gillett was COO at Symantec. Earlier, he held key executive posts at Best Buy, Starbucks and Digital Ventures.
Gillett provided more clues about Chronicle's technology in this blog post, stating:
"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. We are building our intelligence and analytics platform to solve this problem."
A number of Fortune 500 companies provided guidance to shape Chronicle, and some are are participating in an early alpha program of the platform. Gillett did not disclose pricing or availability plans for the service.
The Race to Protect Cloud Services, Enterprise Workloads
The Amazon-Sqrrl and Alphabet Chronicle moves surface at a key time for enterprise customers. Although enterprises are getting more comfortable with cloud security, recent research suggests public cloud services are ticking time bombs for CSPs and their customers.
Indeed, a cyberattack temporarily taking down one of the three top U.S. cloud service providers — AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform -- could trigger up to $19 billion in business losses, the risk assessment firm Lloyd’s of London said in a new report.
