Alphabet pushes for corporate computing, unveils unit to stop cyber attacks

Alphabet's big cash pile and existing customer relationships also make Chronicle a threat to security tools vendors

Alphabet launched a new business unit 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.

The new unit, dubbed Chronicle, is betting on the premise that machine learning software, a type of artificial intelligence, can sift and analyse massive stores of data to detect cyber threats more quickly and precisely than is possible with traditional methods. Stephen Gillett, chief executive of Chronicle and a former top official at the cyber firm Symantec Corp, said access to Google’s expertise in automated data analysis