• Google Cloud accidentally deleted UniSuper’s account and backups, causing a major data loss and downtime for the company.
  • UniSuper was able to recover data from backups with a different provider after the incident.
  • The incident highlighted the importance of having safeguards in place for cloud service providers to prevent such catastrophic events from occurring.
  • Gormadt
    link
    fedilink
    English
    516 months ago

    As the saying goes: if you only have one backup you have zero backups.

    How the fuck does Google of all companies manage to accidentally delete that‽

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      216 months ago

      If this is the thing I heard of a few days ago then google had multiple backups on different sites but they managed to delete all of them

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        56 months ago

        I guess they weren’t paying quite enough to have offline backups? I believe financial institutions can keep stuff stored in caves (think records of all the mortgages a bank wants to be repaid for - data loss isn’t an option).

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          96 months ago

          From the sounds of it, they did, since they were able to recover the data from elsewhere.

          They just lost the data they kept and stored with Google.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      86 months ago

      Backups all tied to the same Google account that got mistakenly terminated, and automation did the rest?

      It didn’t matter that they might have had backups on different services, since it was all centralised through Google, it was all blown away simultaneously.

      • Richard
        link
        fedilink
        English
        26 months ago

        UniSuper was able to recover data from backups with a different provider after the incident.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        26 months ago

        It’s weird that backups got deleted immediately. I would imagine they get marked for deletion but really deleted something like a month later to prevent this kind of issue.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          16 months ago

          That’s when accounts are closed or payments missed, I think in this case they just deleted the sub itself which just bypassed everything for instant deletion.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1
            edit-2
            6 months ago

            I don’t see why it matters that it was a subscription. Anything which deletes data should be a soft delete.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      56 months ago

      My first job was in a Big Iron shop in the late 80’s, where I was in charge of backups. We kept Three sets of backups, on two different media, one on hand, one in a different location in the main building, in a water and fireproof safe, and one offsite. We had a major failure one day, and had to do a restore.

      Both inhouse copies failed to restore. Thankfully the offsite copy worked. We were in panic. That taught me to keep all my important data on three sets. As the old saying goes: Data loss is not an if question, but a when question. Also, remember that “the cloud” simply means someone else’s remote servers over which you have no control.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      36 months ago

      Everything is tied to the subscriptions, they deleted the sub and that automatically deleted all backups.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        36 months ago

        That sounds like a pretty trashy backup scheme. I don’t care what your subscription status is I’m keeping those backups until retension’s over.

      • capital
        link
        fedilink
        English
        26 months ago

        Very stupid.

        AWS has a holding period after account deletion where nothing is actually deleted, just inaccessible and access can be regained without data loss.

        Since first hearing about this I’m wondering how TF Google Cloud doesn’t have a similar SOP.

      • Possibly linux
        link
        fedilink
        English
        236 months ago

        It sounds similar to “a unscheduled pen test” and other corporate speak

        • andrew
          link
          fedilink
          English
          156 months ago

          These situations are almost always self-inflicted. If someone else hacked Google Cloud this badly then you’d likely have heard it from them first. And they probably would have done something significantly more destructive if their goal was harming Google reputation.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Sounds really dramatic in a news item though. Click bait. :)

      But yeah, I recently moved away from these cloud services and have a Nas at home now. Only encrypted backups in cloud. Because fuck Google.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        36 months ago

        “Unprecedented” is kinda hot right now. Tries to mitigate too much blame being heaped on: “obviously we prepare for the usual and even the unexpected, but this has literally never happened before (give us another shot pls)”.

        So it’s interesting for the news that it takes on a different context when said breathlessly: “UNPRECEDENTED failure!”

    • andrew
      link
      fedilink
      English
      196 months ago

      Unprecedented only means there’s no precedent. This just hasn’t happened before at this scale.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        206 months ago

        I was only commenting on the phrasing. ‘unprecedented cloud event’ sounds like some global scale meteorological event.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    146 months ago

    Follow the 3-2-1 rule for your important data, ideally 4-3-2 or better. Remember, if you only have one copy of your data, you actually have zero copies of your data.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    76 months ago

    If you didn’t put Google’s name in there I would’ve assumed a different company facepalming. Hint: it’s the one whose name sounds like ‘unsure’.

  • adONis
    link
    fedilink
    English
    46 months ago

    Always follow the 3-2-1 rule, Google. Always!