Google allowed a large cloud leak, resulting in serious consequences for one of its customers. An employee accidentally deleted the private cloud account of the Australian Pension Fund Unisuper, which manages assets worth $125 billion. Due to this incident, more than half a million participants of the Unisuper Foundation were unable to access their accounts for about a week. Full access was restored only on May 2nd, after using a backup account from another cloud provider. In a joint statement, General Director of Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian, and the head of Unisuper, Peter Chan, admitted fault and assured measures were in place to prevent future occurrences.
Despite Google’s claim that this error was a one-time incident, the potential for failures and disruptions raises concerns among companies and government entities relying on cloud platforms. Google Cloud’s clientele includes 60% of the world’s largest corporations and 90% of cutting-edge AI startups. Nearly half a million companies globally utilize Google Cloud, with major clients such as Volkswagen and Royal Bank of Canada.
American governmental bodies and intelligence agencies also rely on cloud services for data storage. For instance, the NSA struck a $10 billion deal with Amazon for intelligence transfer to the cloud, while the Pentagon holds a $9 billion contract for cloud computing services with Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and Amazon.