Tencent Cloud says ‘improper operations’ led to data loss for client as it seeks to implement improvements
Tencent Cloud said employees broke operational rules concerning data relocation and improvements are being made
Improper operations at Tencent Cloud, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China internet giant Tencent Holdings, led to a metadata loss for one enterprise customer, which said the missing information was worth tens of millions of yuan.
After a technical analysis, Tencent Cloud said in a statement on Tuesday that “improper operations” caused the metadata damage, specifically instances where employees broke operational rules concerning data relocation. Tencent Cloud announced a series of improvement measures in the statement, without offering the customer an immediate solution.
“We will try our best to settle the problem, at the same time we will optimise related mechanisms to avoid a recurrence of the situation in future,” said Tencent Cloud.
The issue became public when the client, Beijing Qingbo Data Control Technology, on Sunday posted a statement on Weibo, a Twitter-like social platform in China, saying that it had suffered a data loss on Tencent Cloud on July 20 after using the platform for eight months, and that all of the company’s data – including backup files – were lost and could not be recovered.
The company said Tencent Cloud’s proposed compensation of 136,469 yuan (US$20,000) was “infuriating”, as it suffered a “catastrophic” loss of data worth tens of million of yuan.