Google Cloud glitch erases uniSuper data, sparks two‑week recovery battle
A popular saying states that people are divided into those who make backups and those who will start making them. The story of a company from the United Kingdom shows that even performing backups does not guarantee data safety, at least not with Google.
7:42 PM EDT, May 21, 2024
UniSuper is a pension fund from Australia worth $135 billion and managing the assets of 650,000 clients. The company had to face an unusual problem of data loss, as detailed by the Niebezpiecznik service.
According to available information, UniSuper uses Google Cloud in its operations. Thanks to Google's services, the company’s data was stored in two geographically separate locations and additionally in a backup placed in Google Cloud.
Due to an error that led to the deletion of the Private Cloud subscription, Google simultaneously deleted all data and backups. This resulted in UniSuper's two-week battle to regain access to its corporate data. This was only possible thanks to another backup stored with a different provider.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian summarized the incident: "The disruption arose from an unprecedented sequence of events whereby an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning of UniSuper’s Private Cloud services ultimately resulted in the deletion of UniSuper’s private cloud subscription."
Neither Google nor other interested parties disclosed what sequence of events Google's engineers did not anticipate, which ultimately led to the deletion of data and the client's prolonged battle to recover it.
