Pretend for a second that you are a superannuation fund, the custodian of the retirement funds of countless Australians. Everything is going swimmingly, your private cloud is running smoothly on Google’s gleaming infrastructure, and then something goes wrong. Google erases your private cloud by mistake, which is a huge gaffe. Sure, gets rid of it. Keeps track of it. It does not obfuscate the problem by claiming a server error. My bad, I’m out.
You have entered the UniSuper Cloudocalypse, a catastrophe so devastating it could have been plucked straight out of a disaster film. The only difference is that this actually happened, and it made everyone in the tech industry think twice about cloud risk management.
How Does One Accidentally Delete a Cloud?
That is a reasonable inquiry. Google hasn’t given us the rundown, but it seems like a fascinating concoction of human mistake, dubious procedures, and the type of oversight that makes your grandma’s insistence on preserving paper copies of everything look rather prudent.
In a modern Google workplace, an unsuspecting engineer hits “run” on a seemingly innocuous maintenance script. However, rather than maintaining, that script destroys. As quickly as a complimentary buffet at a tech conference disappears, so does the private cloud infrastructure of UniSuper, which is responsible for countless Australians’ retirement aspirations.
Google deserves praise for their prompt response in realizing the mistake and initiating restoration operations. But by then it had passed. Now that it had happened, the tech sector was in a state of disbelief, wondering what had transpired and how to stop it from happening again.
A Comedic Look at Cloud Risk Management Errors
More than a technical gaffe, this whole thing was a textbook case of Murphy’s Law. Everything that could possibly go wrong will. Furthermore, “going wrong” in the cloud can have far-reaching effects.
1. A Fancier Way of Saying “Blame Game”: The Shared Responsibility Model
Providers of cloud services are fond of praising the shared responsibility paradigm. This arrangement is similar to a housemate contract: “I’ll take care of the infrastructure, you take care of your data.” As appealing as the idea seems in principle, assigning blame becomes more complicated when one housemate (Google) inadvertently sets fire to the entire neighborhood.
In times of crisis, the lines of culpability become more blurry, as the UniSuper disaster demonstrated. Maybe UniSuper did an excellent job of managing their data, but if the infrastructure that supports it disappears, then what useful is the data itself?
2. Digital Backups: Just Like Insurance
Supposedly, everyone has a backup plan. Backups are only useful if you can restore them fully and rapidly, as UniSuper discovered. Your disaster recovery plan is just a PowerPoint presentation ready to let you down if it hasn’t been tested in real-world scenarios.
3. The Inevitable Importance of Human Error
Weaknesses in human systems always exist, regardless of how advanced your technology is. The possibility of mistake is constant, whether it’s an engineer pressing the wrong button or a boss giving the go-ahead to a dangerous procedure. Mistakes made by people in the cloud have the potential to have far-reaching consequences.
4. Taking a Chance on a Single Vendor: Relying on Their Services
Google was entrusted with UniSuper’s private cloud. I don’t see why not. A tech behemoth like Google has more money and manpower than several tiny nations. But this instance highlights the dangers of being tied down to a single source. The downfall of a single supplier becomes your downfall when that supplier possesses the keys to your kingdom.
The Future of Risk Management After UniSuper
Cloud companies’ supposed infallibility was shattered when the UniSuper catastrophe destroyed more than just a private cloud. This has caused a tsunami to hit the risk management industry.
1. Zero Trust’s Rapid Ascent in the Cloud
There has been recent progress toward the “zero trust” ideology. Just having faith in your cloud provider isn’t cutting it anymore. On the contrary, businesses are embracing the “verify everything” mentality. With zero trust, not even your cloud provider can get away with anything, thanks to features like real-time monitoring and granular access controls.
2. The Backup to Your Backup: Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Strategies
The days of businesses depending on just one cloud provider are over. It is now common practice to employ hybrid and multi-cloud methods. Businesses can reduce their vulnerability to failure at any one location by spreading their workloads over different servers. Even if Google were to remove one cloud, you would still have another one ready to go.
3. Artificial Intelligence-Powered Risk Management: Robots Rule
To compensate for human frailties, AI is stepping in. Anomalies, impending breakdowns, and recovery procedures can all be automated with the help of monitoring technologies driven by AI. Like a watchful angel who never slumbers or makes a mistake, it watches over your cloud.
4. Reassessing SLAs: It’s Time to Take Things Seriously
In the past, SLAs (Service Level Agreements) were considered standard operating procedure papers. No more. Strong recovery timescales, monetary penalties for downtime, and transparency surrounding incident response methods are some of the more stringent assurances that organizations are asking from their providers.
The Hard Part of Lessons Learned
Organizations navigating the cloud ecosystem can learn serious lessons from the UniSuper disaster, despite its comedic and ludicrous nature. The following are the key points:
1. Make Sure Your Backup Procedures Are Robust
Like a fire extinguisher, a disaster recovery plan needs to be tested before a fire breaks out. Make sure your backup and recovery procedures can manage the worst-case scenarios by testing them often under real-world conditions.
2. Broaden Your Portfolio of Cloud Services
Avoid putting all your hopes on a single cloud or basket. Decrease reliance on a single provider by using hybrid and multi-cloud techniques.
3. Put money on AI and automation.
Automate mundane chores and keep tabs on your cloud environment with the help of AI-powered technologies. This guarantees quicker reaction times in the event of an incident and decreases the likelihood of human mistake.
4. Make Vendor Agreements Stronger
Be sure to keep your cloud providers to their word. Work out service level agreements (SLAs) that contain specific recovery promises, clear criteria for communication, and substantial monetary fines for infractions.
5. Embrace the Zero Trust Principle
Building trust takes time and effort. Make sure that every request for access is carefully examined, regardless of who is making it—users, systems, or cloud providers—by implementing zero trust principles.
Oh wait! The silverlining!
The tech industry has been forced to confront its blind spots as a result of the UniSuper debacle, which is one beneficial outcome. The advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing are both here to stay. Organizations can make their systems more resilient and make sure the next cloud disaster is only a cautionary tale by learning from this high-profile failure.
While the UniSuper Cloudocalypse began as a comedic blunder, it concludes with a sobering reminder: just like in life, you should hope for the best but be prepared for the worse when it comes to the cloud. Your grandma may have been onto something when she suggested you maintain a physical duplicate of everything.
