Google is buying a company for half a billion dollars to boost cloud security

According to Reuters, Google's $500 million acquisition of Israel-based firm Siemplify is intended to assist the corporation to boost its cloud security program, Chronicle. Google described Siemplify as security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) firm in a blog post announcing the acquisition, and expects to incorporate its features into Chronicle.

"SIEMPLIFY ENABLES SECURITY OPERATION CENTER ANALYSTS TO MANAGE THEIR OPERATIONS FROM START TO FINISH"

Sunil Potti, vice president of Google Cloud Security, writes in a blog post, "Siemplify is an easy workbench that enables security teams to both manage risk better and minimize the cost of mitigating attacks". "Siemplify enables Security Operation Center analysts to oversee their operations from start to finish, respond to cyber threats with speed and precision, and learn with each analyst interaction."

Siemplify was founded in 2015, and according to Reuters, it has raised a total of $58 million from investors to date. According to a person close to the matter, Alphabet-owned Google grew interested in buying the business after learning that Siemplify was planning another round of investment. Siemplify will now be included in the Google Cloud portfolio alongside Chronicle.

Chronicle was created in 2018 as a spinoff of X Development (previously Google X), Alphabet's "moonshot factory," and is intended to assist major organizations in detecting, analyzing, and storing security-related data. According to Vice, security professionals were excited when the company first started since it was intended to use new machine-learning technology and telemetry data to improve organizations' cybersecurity. However, Vice reports that after becoming a part of Google Cloud in 2019, some employees, including co-founder Mike Wiacek, resigned because they thought the company had lost sight of its original objective.

Google's purchase of Siemplify comes only a few months after the internet juggernaut committed to investing more than $10 billion in cybersecurity in the United States over the next five years. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in May to help strengthen national cybersecurity in the wake of the severe attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and Microsoft Exchange Server.