Google Cloud Deletes $125 Billion Pension Account: What Went Wrong?
Google Cloud accidentally deleted a massive Australian pension fund's account, causing a week-long outage for over half a million people. While no data was lost and it wasn't a cyberattack, it highlights the importance of strong backups and robust cloud configurations for critical financial data. The Specifics: UniSuper: This is an Australian superannuation fund catering to employees in higher education and research sectors. It manages retirement savings for over half a million members. Google Cloud: UniSuper utilized Google Cloud's private cloud services, a secure, isolated environment within Google's cloud infrastructure. The Cause: While the exact details haven't been publicly disclosed, experts believe the "misconfiguration" likely involved an error during provisioning (setting up) UniSuper's private cloud account. This could include: Accidental deletion: A human error during account creation could have triggered the deletion. Configur...