Google Demos Its Reliability
June 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Migrate everything to the cloud, they said. It is perfectly safe, we were told. And yet, “Google Cloud Accidentally Deletes $125 Billion Pension Fund’s Online Account,” reports Cyber Security News. Writer Dhivya reports a mistake in the setup process was to blame for the blunder. If it were not for a third-party backup, UniSuper’s profile might never have been recovered. We learn:
“A major mistake in setup caused Google Cloud and UniSuper to delete the financial service provider’s private cloud account. This event has caused many to worry about the security and dependability of cloud services, especially for big financial companies. The outage started in the blue, and UniSuper’s 620,000 members had no idea what was happening with their retirement funds.”
As it turns out, the funds themselves were just fine. But investors were understandably upset when they could not view updates. Together, the CEOs of Google Cloud and UniSuper dined on crow. Dhivya writes:
“According to the Guardian reports, the CEOs of UniSuper and Google Cloud, Peter Chun and Thomas Kurian, apologized for the failure together in a statement, which is not often done. … ‘UniSuper’s Private Cloud subscription was ultimately terminated due to an unexpected sequence of events that began with an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning,’ the two sources stated. ‘Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has confirmed that the disruption was caused by an unprecedented sequence of events.’ ‘This is a one-time event that has never happened with any of Google Cloud’s clients around the world.’ ‘This really shouldn’t have happened,’ it said.”
At least everyone can agree on that. We are told UniSuper had two different backups, but they were also affected by the snafu. It was the backups kept by “another service provider” that allowed the hundreds of virtual machines, databases, and apps that made up UniSuper’s private cloud environment to be recovered. Eventually. The CEOs emphasized the herculean effort it took both Google Cloud and UniSuper technicians to make it happen. We hope they were well-paid. Naturally, both companies pledge to do keep this mistake from happening again. Great! But what about the next unprecedented, one-time screwup?
Let this be a reminder to us all: back up the data! Frequently and redundantly. One never knows when that practice will save the day.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2024
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