Why Backing Up Google Cloud Storage Is Non-Negotiable 

Google Cloud Storage powers modern, Internet-scale workloads. It is no longer just a destination for cold data. Teams use it to feed AI pipelines, stream analytics, and run cloud-native applications. 

With high-value, business-critical data flowing through Google Cloud Storage, the stakes for protection have never been higher. 

Where Native Features Fall Short 

Google Cloud Storage provides strong durability and helpful safeguards. You get eleven nines object durability across multiple zones, object versioning, bucket replication, lifecycle rules, and compliance controls like retention policies with bucket lock and object holds. These reduce risk from hardware faults and many day-to-day mistakes. 

What they do not guarantee is resilience when the control plane is the problem. Stolen credentials, misconfigured IAM, brittle automation, or large-scale errors can still remove or corrupt data. Because these controls mirror the live state, bad changes can spread as quickly as good ones. Even with native features enabled, critical data can still be lost without warning. 

Five Reasons Google Cloud Storage Needs Separate, Immutable Backup

1. Supply Chain Compromise by the Cloud Vendor 

No matter how secure your environment is, every organization inherits risk from its cloud provider. Issues inside Google Cloud or its dependencies can ripple widely, causing outages, access failures, encryption issues, or even data deletion. 

Documented Incident: UniSuper is a major Australian superannuation fund with about A$130 billion under management. In May 2024, a provider change in Google Cloud’s control plane accidentally deleted UniSuper’s private cloud subscription and data across regions. A misconfiguration triggered a latent software defect and safeguards did not stop it. Primary systems were deleted, and some backups were impacted, leading to roughly two weeks of recovery between May 8 and May 15 and reliance on independent off-platform copies alongside cloud-based restores. About 600,000 members were affected. [^1] 

2. Administrative Misconfigurations

Even well-intentioned changes can cause irreversible loss. Misapplied IAM policies, disabled versioning, unexpected key rotation, or access restrictions can all block or destroy data, especially when rollback options aren’t available. 

Documented Incident: In 2024, WotNot, an Indian AI chatbot startup, left a Google Cloud Storage bucket publicly accessible, letting anyone with the URL list and download its contents. Found in late August and secured in November, the exposure covered about 346,000 files, including scanned passports, government IDs, medical records, résumés, and travel itineraries. The potential impact was severe: data loss for WotNot via exfiltration, regulatory penalties and legal liability under data protection laws, and targeted phishing and account takeovers. 

WotNot blamed an unverified policy change and said the bucket served free-tier users, with enterprise data stored separately. The case shows how a single misconfiguration can turn cloud storage into a large privacy breach. [^2] 

3. Compliance and Governance Enforcement 

Retention policies and compliance settings protect against unwanted deletion, but they can also lock in bad writes or corrupted files, leaving teams unable to recover until the retention period ends. 

Documented Incident:  A team using Grafana Loki on Google Cloud Storage set a one-day retention policy for Loki index files. During maintenance, the Loki compactor tried to merge and delete older files, but Google Cloud Storage blocked the deletes due to retention. Compaction failed, stale or corrupted files remained, and maintenance was delayed until the retention period ended. This was reported in the Grafana community forum. 

This shows how a control that protects integrity can also block fixes. Retention can turn a simple delete-and-rewrite into a waiting game, leaving data present but unchangeable until the policy allows updates. [^3] 

4. Security Incidents 

Google Cloud Storage is a high-value target. With widely documented APIs, attackers who gain access through stolen credentials, privilege escalation, or insider actions can delete or overwrite objects, change policies, or even disable encryption keys. 

Documented Incident: In 2023, Astrix Security revealed GhostToken. Attackers tricked users into approving a malicious OAuth app, then deleted the Google Cloud project behind it so the app vanished from the user’s approved apps list. Later, they restored the project and used still-valid refresh tokens to regain access, repeating this cycle to stay hidden. Google fixed the issue in April 2023 after coordinated disclosure.  

If the app had storage scopes or equivalent permissions, attackers could have read, overwritten, or deleted objects in Google Cloud Storage; public reports did not confirm Google Cloud Storage changes in this case, though the risk was real. [^4] 

5. Operational and Platform Failures 

Even routine operations can go sideways. Partial uploads, compose errors, brittle triggers, or misconfigured Pub/Sub notifications can cause data loss. If coupled with a platform-wide incident, the effects multiply. 

Documented Incident: In June 2025, a broken quota-policy change in Google’s Service Control system led to a global outage. For seven hours, dozens of services including Google Cloud Storage returned 5xx errors and timed out. Data durability remained intact, but availability was lost across regions. Even brief disruptions like this can block business-critical operations. [^5] 

Logically Air-Gapped Backups for Rapid Recovery 

The best protection across all these risks? Immutable, logically air-gapped backups with point-in-time recovery. 

Logically air gapped means your backups live in a separate Google Cloud project and billing account with distinct credentials and roles, and with immutability or time-based retention, so changes in production cannot modify or delete backup copies. Even if production access is compromised, those backups remain intact and recoverable. 

HYCU, in partnership with Dell, delivers exactly that. We provide cost-efficient, ransomware-resilient backups for Google Cloud Storage so you can recover confidently, even in worst-case scenarios. Use DDVE on Google Cloud as your primary backup target for Google Cloud Storage data. 

For BCDR, tier an immutable second copy from DDVE on Google Cloud to DDVE on Amazon or Azure. This approach lowers cross-cloud egress and storage costs and reduces correlated risk from provider-side issues and regional dependencies. 

Easy to Manage and Immutable by Design 

Check out https://www.hycu.com/solutions/data-protection/dell-powerprotect-data-domain to see how HYCU and Dell deliver cost-efficient and resilient backup for Google Cloud Storage. 

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References 

1. Google Cloud Customer Support. (2024, May 24). Details of Google Cloud GCVE incident. Google Cloud Blog.
2. Naprys, E. (2024, November 28). Hello, this is your chatbot leaking: WotNot exposes 346K sensitive customer files. Cybernews.
3. tback. (2025, August 28). Compaction Error: Compaction failing with Google Cloud Storage bucket retention policy (403 retentionPolicyNotMet). Grafana Labs Community Forums.
4. Astrix Security. (2023, April 20). GhostToken: Exploiting GCP application infrastructure to create an invisible, unremovable trojan app on Google accounts. Astrix Security
5. Google Cloud. (2025, June 12). Multiple GCP products experienced service issues (Incident ow5i3PPK96RduMcb1SsW). Google Cloud Service Health.