Google lost, then recovered, all the data for a multi-billion dollar pension fund in Australia
The Google Cloud logo was prominently displayed at their pavilion during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024. Google Cloud, a suite of cloud computing services by the American multinational corporation, provides modular cloud services such as computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning.
Google Cloud has stated that they have fixed the issue that led to one of its servers wiping out a multi-billion-dollar pension fund in Australia. The incident occurred because someone forgot to fill in one box on a form, resulting in an unprecedented sequence of events.
The Issue and Fix
According to Google, the problem arose from a series of events that led to the deletion of a significant amount of data belonging to UniSuper, a pension fund in Australia. In early 2023, while adjusting the capacity for one of UniSuper's private clouds, a Google Cloud operator failed to check one box on a form, causing the system to inadvertently set a one-year term on the data in that specific system.
When the year expired earlier this year, the data was deleted, which included $135 billion AU (approximately $90 billion U.S.) in pension funds for 647,000 individuals in Australia. Google clarified that it was neither the customer's fault nor the system's fault, and the customer was not informed about the impending deletion.
Data Recovery Efforts
It took approximately two weeks to recover the data. The Google teams, along with the customer, worked around the clock for several days to restore UniSuper's GCVE Private Cloud, including the network and security configurations, applications, and data, in order to resume full operations.
Despite the significant loss of data, the collaborative efforts of the teams involved were able to recover and restore the affected systems and information.
Sources: Google Cloud, UniSuper
