UniSuper had trouble accessing the accounts of 620,000 users. This was caused by a configuration error in the Google Cloud infrastructure. The companies stated that the problem was not a cyber attack and that user data was secure. Peter Chun, CEO of UniSuper, and Thomas Kurian, Global CEO of Google Cloud, apologized to users and said the issue was the result of a very rare and unexpected configuration sequence.
Unprecedented in the history of Google Cloud’s service
This is unprecedented in the history of Google Cloud’s service. UniSuper announced that it has activated backups stored on other servers to prevent data loss. With $125 billion in assets under UniSuper’s management, the financial implications of such a problem could be huge. However, UniSuper reported that customer accounts have been offline for more than a week and that work is ongoing to resolve the issue. It was stated that customer accounts temporarily show the previous week’s figures, but updated data will be available as soon as possible.
