Lessons from the UniSuper Incident: Why Third-Party Backups Are Essential for Cloud Recovery
- 17 November, 2025
- 8:53 am
The 2024 UniSuper outage underscores the risks of cloud reliance—discover why third-party backups are vital for provable recovery and compliance.
In May 2024, a major Australian pension fund, UniSuper, experienced a catastrophic outage when Google Cloud accidentally deleted its entire private cloud account. Managing $125 billion in assets for 620,000 members, the fund was offline for over a week, highlighting the vulnerabilities in depending solely on hyperscaler providers for data protection. This incident serves as a stark reminder for EU and UK organizations about the importance of independent backups, especially as GDPR directives ramp up requirements for demonstrable cyber resilience.
While the event occurred outside the EU, its implications resonate here, where data sovereignty and regulatory compliance are non-negotiable. Relying on US-based cloud giants can expose businesses to jurisdictional risks and unexpected deletions, even from human error rather than cyberattacks. Third-party backups, stored in EU-only environments, provide a critical safety net, ensuring quick recovery and audit-ready evidence to satisfy insurers and regulators.
As IT managers and CISOs face increasing scrutiny from boards on continuity planning, incidents like this emphasize the need for strategies that go beyond built-in cloud tools. Without them, downtime can lead to operational chaos, financial losses, and potential fines under GDPR or NIS2.
What Happened in the UniSuper Google Cloud Deletion
The outage stemmed from a misconfiguration during the provisioning of UniSuper's private cloud services. A Google engineer inadvertently triggered a deletion that canceled the subscription, wiping out data across two geographically redundant locations. Described in a joint statement by UniSuper and Google as an "isolated, one-of-a-kind occurrence," it was not due to malice but a chain of systemic failures in automated safeguards. Timeline-wise, the deletion happened in early May 2024, with services going dark immediately. Members couldn't access their accounts, and balances showed outdated figures from the prior week. Google Cloud's response team worked around the clock, but full restoration took over seven days, involving the reconstruction of hundreds of virtual machines, databases, and applications. Critically, UniSuper had duplicated data in two regions for redundancy, a standard practice. However, the subscription cancellation propagated the deletion universally, rendering built-in backups useless. This exposed a key flaw: cloud provider controls can fail spectacularly when internal errors occur.
The Business Impacts of Such Cloud Outages
For UniSuper, the week-long downtime disrupted operations for a massive user base, preventing account access and updates. While no personal data was exposed and it wasn't a cyber incident, the event caused frustration and potential reputational harm. In a regulated financial sector, this could translate to lost trust and delayed transactions, with indirect costs mounting quickly.
Extrapolating to EU contexts, similar outages could incur severe penalties. Under NIS2, operators of essential services must demonstrate "duty of care" in risk management, including provable recovery capabilities. Failure here might lead to fines up to €10 million or 2% of global turnover, plus board-level liability for negligence.
Moreover, cyber insurance providers are tightening policies, often requiring evidence of regular restore tests and immutable backups. Without them, renewals become costlier or impossible. Downtime alone averages €8,000 per minute for mid-sized firms, per industry reports, amplifying the need for strategies that minimize RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective).
Why Built-In Cloud Backups Aren't Enough for True Resilience
Hyperscalers like Google offer robust tools, but as the UniSuper case shows, they operate within the same ecosystem. A single misconfiguration can erase everything, including backups, because they're tied to the account or subscription. This shared responsibility model leaves gaps: providers handle infrastructure, but customers must secure their data against all threats, including internal errors.
In the EU, additional layers complicate this. US-based providers fall under extraterritorial laws like the CLOUD Act, risking data access without EU oversight. This undermines data sovereignty, a core principle under GDPR, where organizations must ensure data stays within EEA jurisdictions to avoid transfer risks.
Ransomware adds another dimension—attackers target backups first. Built-in options may lack immutability (write-once-read-many protection), making them vulnerable. The incident highlights how third-party backups, independent of the primary cloud, enable faster, more reliable recovery without propagating errors.
The Role of Third-Party Backups in Ensuring Data Sovereignty and Compliance
Third-party backups address these vulnerabilities by operating outside the hyperscaler's control. In UniSuper's recovery, an external provider's copies minimized data loss and sped up restoration, proving their value in real-world scenarios.
For EU businesses, choosing providers with NL/DE data centers ensures sovereignty, keeping information under EEA laws and avoiding US lock-in. Immutable backups add ransomware defense, with air-gapped copies that can't be altered. This aligns with NIS2's emphasis on supply chain security and incident response, as outlined in ENISA's technical guidance on risk management measures.
Compliance frameworks like ISO 27001 and NEN 7510 demand audit-ready evidence, such as restore logs and test reports. Third-party services can provide SLAs for RTO/RPO, plus managed protection for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, filling shared responsibility gaps. To explore how this integrates with endpoint and server backups, see our data security solutions overview.
How to Prepare Your Organization for Similar Risks
Start with a gap analysis: Assess your current backup strategy against GDPR requirements, focusing on recovery testing. Conduct quarterly drills to verify RTO/RPO targets, documenting results for auditors and insurers.
Implement multi-layered protection: Combine cloud-native tools with third-party, EU-sovereign options. For critical workloads, prioritize immutable storage and automated verification to detect issues early.
Partner with specialists for managed services, ensuring continuity without straining internal teams. Our disaster recovery as a service offers provable SLAs and test evidence, tailored for regulated industries.
Finally, update policies to include data sovereignty clauses in vendor contracts, aligning with GDPR's emphasis on lawful processing and storage.
Conclusion: Prioritizing Provable Recovery in Uncertain Times
The UniSuper incident reminds us that even top-tier clouds aren't infallible, making third-party backups indispensable for cloud recovery and business continuity. With NIS2 enforcing stricter accountability, now is the time to secure EU-only solutions that deliver audit evidence and minimize downtime risks. At Mindtime, we specialize in these areas, helping you demonstrate resilience to stakeholders. If you're evaluating your setup, contact us to discuss how our compliance and audit readiness services can support your needs—let's ensure your data is protected and recoverable, no matter what.
Frequently asked questions
What makes third-party backups superior to cloud provider options? +
Third-party backups operate independently, avoiding the pitfalls seen in UniSuper where a provider error deleted everything. They offer features like immutability for ransomware protection and EU-specific storage for sovereignty. This ensures faster recovery with minimal data loss. Additionally, they provide detailed logs for compliance audits under NIS2 or GDPR. In practice, this means better control over RTO and RPO.
How does the UniSuper incident relate to GDPR compliance? +
GDPR requires essential entities to implement risk management measures, including backup and recovery strategies. The incident illustrates the dangers of single-provider reliance, which could fail GDPR "duty of care" standards. Organizations must prove restore capabilities to avoid fines. Third-party backups help by offering verifiable tests and evidence. This ties into broader EU cyber resilience goals.
What steps can IT managers take to enhance data sovereignty in backups? +
Begin by selecting providers with EEA-only data centers, like those in the Netherlands or Germany. Review contracts for sovereignty clauses to comply with GDPR. Implement encryption and access controls for all backups. Regular audits ensure alignment with standards like ISO 27001. For managed support, consider services focused on Microsoft 365 and endpoints.