Google Accidentally Deletes UniSuper Cloud Account with approx A$125 billion funds

In early May 2024, Australian superannuation fund manager UniSuper suffered a major data disaster. Retirement records for over 620,000 members were accidentally deleted, involving a staggering sum of A$125 billion.

According to UniSuper’s investigation, the incident occurred due to human error during a database maintenance operation by Google Cloud. This resulted in the deletion of UniSuper’s account along with its backup data.

UniSuper confirmed they had implemented disaster recovery measures with offsite backups. However, when the account was deleted, Google Cloud synchronized the deletion across all their data centers, erasing the offsite backup as well.

Fortunately, UniSuper had a separate service agreement with another cloud provider, where they maintained a synchronized backup of their data. This allowed them to restore most of their services thanks to the backup on the other cloud platform.

This incident highlights the critical importance of disaster recovery and the necessity of a multi-cloud strategy.

In the cloud era, businesses entrusting data to cloud providers must prioritize data protection. While offsite backups ensure data recovery in case of disasters, a multi-cloud strategy mitigates significant losses when a single cloud provider experiences issues.

Here are some data protection measures businesses can implement:

• Implement disaster recovery measures with data backups stored in geographically separate data centers or with different cloud providers.
• Utilize multiple cloud providers to avoid major losses caused by problems with a single provider.
• Regularly test data backups and disaster recovery procedures to ensure their effectiveness.
• Educate employees on data security to increase their awareness and vigilance.

By establishing robust data protection measures, businesses can reduce the risk of data disasters and ensure a swift recovery when they occur.