Google cloud helps millions save and store their important data and files behind an encrypted platform. So, when the cloud service makes a big mistake, billions worth of pension funds go missing that affect millions of people.
That’s exactly what happened with the members of the UniSuper which is an Australia-based pension fund. News reports pointed out about the issue which made the accounts inaccessible for over half a million members for a week, which meant these people were unable to track their pension funds, and in some cases, the amount reflecting in their accounts were lower than actual figure.
Google Cloud Mishap: Fund Money Goes Missing
The pension fund entity has reached out to its members and assured them of their accounts coming back online this week, and they are working on a quick fix with an update for the issue, as pointed out by Peter Chun, CEO, UniSuper in his email to the half a million members.
But issues like these caused by Cloud disruption is a major concern for many, who now rely on the technology to keep their data secure. Losing their hard-earned pension money was always going to cause concerns, and when these big tech companies like Google face technical issues that lead to such outages, people are right to feel aggrieved.
Things were so heated that both UniSuper and Google chiefs reached out to these members to assure them of a solution and what caused the outage in the first place. Here’s what the statement from both these entities said:
“Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian has confirmed that 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.
This is an isolated, ‘one-of-a-kind occurrence’ that has never before occurred with any of Google Cloud’s clients globally. This should not have happened. Google Cloud has identified the events that led to this disruption and taken measures to ensure this does not happen again.”
The one good news coming out of this situation is that UniSuper had the right mind to keep the data backed up with other service providers, which seems to have kept the losses to a minimum. “UniSuper had backups in place with an additional service provider. These backups have minimised data loss, and significantly improved the ability of UniSuper and Google Cloud to complete the restoration,” the statement highlighted.
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