Google's Sister Company Creates Internal Security Tool To Detect Hackers

Dhir Acharya - Mar 05, 2019

On Monday, Chronicle introduced its new product called Backstory that uses Google’s model to search for malware.

It is believed by experts that Russian hackers infiltrated the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, but the Committee could discover until too late. At the time, anyway, there was no tool to search for hackers in the network like Googling a piece of information on the Internet.

On Monday, Chronicle introduced its new product called Backstory that uses the search engine model. The company is developing an internal security tool based on Google’s model.

Chronicle chief security officer Mike Wiacek said that the DNC could have seen hackers’ activity if they had Backstory at that time and they would have had the opportunity to stop the breach.

Backstory was created thanks to the coordination of Wiacek and Chronicle’s co-founders which resulted in a way to take the internal cybersecurity tools of Google and allow other firms to use it. Chronicle was established also based on moonshot factory X owned by Alphabet – Google’s parent company.

Backstory poses another great example of what Google does best: storing and indexing multiple petabytes of data, allowing faster searches for information. While the idea is not brand new, Chronicle may be the first to actually make it feasible.

Right now, a company has already ordered the Backstory, PACCAR. This early customer specializes in designing and manufacturing commercial vehicles. According to the company’s chief officer of information security, with this tool, PACCAR will be able to gather huge amounts of data as well as to conduct superfast searches.

The creation of the new security tool also shows the level of complexity in detecting and stopping hackers.

In terms of Backstory’s operation, it stores massive amounts of information given by customers of Chronicles recording every happening on company networks, including data like the websites that a computer accesses, if it is a regular site or one that Russian use to spread its malware.

Plus, Stephen Gillet, Chronicle co-founder, said that Google won’t be able to access Backstory’s data in case there are concerns over data privacy.