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

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google’s $500 million acquisition of Israel-based startup Siemplify is supposed to help the company bolster its own cloud security initiative, Chronicle, according to a report from Reuters. In a blog post announcing the deal, Google describes Siemplify as a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) organization and plans to integrate its capabilities into Chronicle.

“Siemplify is an intuitive workbench that enables security teams to both manage risk better and reduce the cost of addressing threats,” Sunil Potti, the vice president of Google Cloud Security, states in the blog post. “Siemplify allows Security Operation Center analysts to manage their operations from end-to-end, respond to cyber threats with speed and precision, and get smarter with every analyst interaction.”

Siemplify got its start in 2015, and as Reuters notes, it has raised a total of $58 million from investors to date. A source close to the situation told Reuters that the Alphabet-owned Google became interested in purchasing the startup after it heard Siemplify was gearing up for another round of funding. Siemplify will now join Chronicle under the Google Cloud umbrella.

Chronicle was first launched in 2018 after spinning off of X Development (formerly Google X), Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” and is supposed to help large enterprises detect, analyze, and store security-related information. According to Vice, security experts were excited about the up-and-coming company when it first launched, as it was supposed to use innovative machine-learning technology and telemetry data to boost companies’ cybersecurity. But after becoming an arm of Google Cloud in 2019, Vice reports that some employees quit — including co-founder Mike Wiacek — as a result of feeling that the company lost its original purpose.

Google’s acquisition of Siemplify doesn’t come long after the tech giant promised to spend over $10 billion over the next five years to help improve US cybersecurity. In May, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to help strengthen national cybersecurity in light of the major attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and Microsoft Exchange Server.