UniSuper has attributed a three-day long outage of its online account services to an “isolated” issue with Google Cloud Platform.
The industry superannuation fund said in response to iTnews’ questions this afternoon that its issue “originates with one of its third-party cloud service providers, Google Cloud”.
“Google Cloud has confirmed that the disruption is an isolated incident, not the result of a malicious act or cyber-attack, and UniSuper data has not been exposed to unauthorised parties as a result of this issue,” UniSuper said.
“We are working in partnership with Google Cloud around the clock to have services restored for members as soon as possible.
“We’re not able to confirm a timeline for resolution at this stage but will keep members informed.”
A spokesperson for Google Cloud A/NZ acknowledged the fault but would not comment on the nature of the technical issues.
Members of UniSuper told iTnews that they – and UniSuper’s contact centre staff – had been unable to confirm deposits or balances during the outage.
Some members said they had received little communication early on about the nature or severity of the issues.
That appeared to be confirmed by the Financial Services Union (FSU), which had also taken up the issue on behalf of members.
FSU characterised the issues as “a massive network outage across several internal systems” and said the incident followed a decision “just last week to outsource roles in the Delivery and Information Business Unit” at the fund.
“This is the very same unit and people who are now working double time to fix this massive problem,” FSU national assistant secretary Nicole McPherson said.
“Outsourcing has become a major issue at UniSuper and is putting staff and fund members at enormous risk.”
McPherson was particularly concerned at the lack of information that had been provided by UniSuper about the outage.
“Over 600,000 fund members have not received any information about what this outage means for them, nor have they even been told it’s happened,” she said.
The FSU said it had been seeking “an urgent briefing on the impacts of the outage” from UniSuper executives.
iTnews sought responses on the technical nature of the incident on Friday.
It’s understood the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which has some oversight of the superannuation sector, is aware of the issue.
Although the nature of the incident is unlikely to require compulsory disclosure to APRA, companies subject to APRA oversight often voluntarily share information relating to incidents or system resilience, though it’s not clear if this is occurring in this particular case.
