Google, the multi-billion dollar technology firm that has become the go-to supplier for dependable cloud services, inadvertently erased the private Google Cloud account of UniSuper a $125 billion Australian superannuation fund. More than half a million UniSuper account holders were locked out of their accounts for practically a week as an aftermath of a seemingly automated accident.
Google accidentally deleted the cloud account of a $125 billion Australian pension fund PIC.TWITTER.COM/CCFEVKHVUM
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) MAY 15, 2024
UniSuper is a well-known superannuation fund in Australia, offering superannuation savings to employees in the country’s higher education and research communities. There are staff members at universities, university colleges, and research schools.
The disruption was traced back to a “one-of-a-kind” misconfiguration on Google Cloud.Within 24 hours, service was restored and an apology sent through email for any inconvenience. The incident, however, resulted in a backup account with another cloud provider to be activated on May 2. Because of the backup, the disruption process was both significant and temporary for UniSuper’s members.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and UniSuper CEO Peter Chun released the following statement in response to the occurrence: “Google Cloud’s global CEO Thomas Kurian and UniSuper CEO Peter Chun on the note had described the event as an isolated incident and although we’re incredibly sorry” “We would like to assure you that Google Cloud has identified the root cause of this incident and identified effective measures to prevent a recurrence of this never-event scenario.”
This incident reflects the connectivity of the potential for glitches and outages in the context of companies and government moving operations into cloud software providers. Furthermore, it serves as a strong message that cloud services always require backups and reliability measures. As seen in this context, even trusted companies like Google Cloud can experience glitches and outages. In light of these conditions, organizations and governments proactively utilizing cloud software should not loosen their guard but perhaps consider some form of redundancy measures.
In 2023, a significant part of UniSuper relocated its operations to the Google Cloud Platform. In particular, all non-production duties, including 1,900 virtual servers, were transferred to Google Cloud. Before that, the operation was divided between another cloud platform, Azure, and two of UniSuper’s data centers.
Google Cloud is a major operator in the global market, with almost 60% of the worldlargest 1,000 companies and 90% of AI unicorns using it. In a platform-as-a-service Capacity, nearly half a million companies worldwide, such as Volkswagen and the Royal Bank of Canada, use Google cloud Even the U.S. government and intelligence-level firms are hooked to it; the National Security Agency and the Pentagon have grand deals with the provider for data transfer.
