Rob Chapman’s Post

Cloud services are great until the cloud service accidentally deletes your subscription and all your data... 🙃 “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,” the pair said. “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.” While UniSuper normally has duplication in place in two geographies, to ensure that if one service goes down or is lost then it can be easily restored, because the fund’s cloud subscription was deleted, it caused the deletion across both geographies.

Google Cloud (GCP) accidentally deleted a customer's account and data including backups. Relying solely on one cloud provider can be risky. Embracing a cross-cloud or hybrid cloud approach is crucial. Never put all your eggs in one basket. #CloudStrategy #HybridCloud #DataSecurity

A Google Cloud glitch left 620k Unisuper members without account access for a week, wiping out their entire private cloud subscription! This incident shows just how crucial it is to have a good backup strategy. You never know when the cloud might rain on you! #Cloud #Google #backup https://lnkd.in/g_8TPRW4

So many lessons we can learn from this story. And no, "you should not use cloud services" is NOT one of them. Data resiliency, backup, 3-2-1, etc. It's always a great time to review your strategy. (They had backups, but that was also on Google Cloud). https://lnkd.in/dc72DE4Q

This is like the worst nightmare for Google, GCP and enterprise cloud in general. So, Google Cloud accidentally deleted a company's entire cloud environment (Unisuper, an investment firm which manages over $100 billion in assets). The company had backups in another region, but GCP deleted those too. Luckily, they had yet more backups on another provider. The CEOs of both companies have apologised to the customers. Going forward you should probably think of DR strategies that include backing up to a different cloud service provider or on prem as well 🤷♂️

A key takeaway from this event, have your backups with multiple cloud providers... "While UniSuper normally has duplication in place in two geographies, to ensure that if one service goes down or is lost then it can be easily restored, because the fund’s cloud subscription was deleted, it caused the deletion across both geographies. UniSuper was able to eventually restore services because the fund had backups in place with another provider." #internalrisk #insiderthreat #businessresiliency #backups #cloudrisk #cloud #recovery https://lnkd.in/gDR9FtkK

Of what value are all your contractual safeguards, SLA, KPI with your cloud-provider if this can happen? This is why having a robust cloud-STRATEGY incl. solid BCP is so important.

The importance of Cloud to Cloud backups. The linked article really demonstrates why you need to protect your Cloud Services with secure backups. Feel free to reach out for a demo or free trial. https://lnkd.in/dmp9WFyF #cloudbackups #anyonecanmakeamistake #protectyourdata

Cloud DR strategy must go beyond multi-region, AZ or backup. How do you rebuild your entire operation quickly (a couple of hours) if required? #cloud #infrastructureascode #IaC #platformengineering