BBVA teams up with Google Cloud for IT security strategy revamp

Spanish Bank BBVA has enlisted the help of Google Cloud to assist with a revamp of its IT security strategy that is geared towards optimising its infrastructure to withstand large-scale threats.

The pair have struck a global partnership that will see BBVA draw on Google Cloud’s portfolio of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to create models that will be used to predict and prevent cyberattacks directed at both its back-office and customer-facing systems.

The deal marks BBVA out as the first bank in Europe to deploy Google Cloud’s security analytics platform, Chronicle, which is designed to aid the swift detection of security threats at scale by allowing IT teams to store and analyse all their security in one place.

Chronicle started life as a security offshoot of Google’s partner company Alphabet at the start of 2018, before being folded into Google Cloud in October of that year.

“The Chronicle platform was built to help companies like BBVA improve its security infrastructure, leveraging the speed and scalability of Google Cloud’s technology,” said Derek White, vice president of global financial services industry at Google Cloud.

“This collaboration will solidify Chronicle as one of the key pillars of BBVA’s security infrastructure and will support its strategy in offering its customers a trusted approach to products and services.”

In addition to tapping into Chronicle’s capabilities, BBVA said it also plans to draw on the cloud giant’s AI capabilities to shape its Security Operations Center of the Future initiative, which will see the two firms collaborate on a jointly developed security platform of their own.

“This partnership represents a leap forward for the bank and allows us to be at the forefront in preventing threats to the security of our financial infrastructure and our clients,” said BBVA chief security officer Álvaro Garrido.

“The platform surprised us in its ability to quickly and accurately mitigate possible threats. Google Cloud’s Chronicle meets our expectations and will be a magnificent partner in the transformation of our security posture, just as Google Cloud has been in other areas of the bank."

The two firms have a long-standing technology partnership, dating back nearly a decade, that has seen BBVA previously roll out Google Cloud’s suite of productivity tools to 11,000 employees.

It has also previously deployed services powered by Google’s AI technologies that are designed to help its customers manage their money, and has also teamed up with the firm to offer consumer banking services via the Google Pay platform.