Why did a Google Cloud outage disrupt HSBC, Lloyds, and Equifax in Europe?
A widespread service disruption on Google Cloud has impacted major financial institutions and credit agencies across Europe, with the vendor confirming early details of the incident.
Key points
- Google Cloud confirmed an outage affecting operations in Europe.
- Major banks including HSBC, Lloyds, and Bank of Scotland were affected.
- Fintech Revolut and credit agency Equifax experienced service disruptions.
A significant service disruption on Google Cloud has impacted major financial institutions and credit agencies across Europe. The outage affected operations for several high-profile organizations, prompting the cloud provider to share early details regarding the incident. This event highlights the operational dependencies that many critical services have on third-party infrastructure providers.
Root cause
Google Cloud has confirmed the occurrence of the outage but has only shared preliminary information about the cause. The specific technical failure or bug class responsible for the disruption has not been detailed in the initial reports. The vendor’s early statements indicate that the issue is being investigated, but no root cause analysis has been released to the public yet.
Attack path
There is no evidence in the current reports that this disruption was caused by a malicious attack or security breach. The event appears to be an infrastructure failure rather than an exploit. The impact was widespread across the region, affecting multiple independent organizations that rely on Google’s cloud services for their core operations.
Affected versions
The outage impacted services hosted on Google Cloud in Europe, specifically affecting the europe-west2 region. As CloudSec Press reported on 2026-10-20, previous disruptions in this region have caused cascading failures for dependent clients like Revolut. This current event similarly affected organizations utilizing infrastructure in this geographic area.
Mitigation
Google Cloud has acknowledged the issue and is working to restore services. No specific patch or fix has been confirmed yet for the underlying cause. Organizations are advised to monitor official status pages for updates. The vendor has not released a timeline for full resolution or a permanent fix for the infrastructure instability.
What it means for organisations
Operations teams should review their dependency maps to identify other services hosted on the same provider region. Risk managers need to assess whether current disaster recovery plans account for widespread cloud provider failures. Leadership should be informed of potential reputational risks if customer-facing services remain down. Check with suppliers to understand their contingency plans for regional outages.
What to do and how to stay safe: Google Cloud
- Monitor the provider’s official status dashboard for real-time updates on service restoration.
- Review internal incident response plans to ensure they cover third-party infrastructure failures.
- Communicate proactively with customers about potential service delays or data access issues.
- Evaluate multi-region or multi-cloud strategies to reduce reliance on a single geographic zone.
Step-by-step guide: Identity and Access Management System: How It Controls Cloud Access
General security guidance from the CloudSec Press newsroom. It is not confirmed advice from the organisations named in this story.
Frequently asked questions
Which organizations were affected by the Google Cloud outage?
HSBC, Revolut, Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, and Equifax were among the organizations affected.
Did Google Cloud confirm the cause of the outage?
Google Cloud confirmed the outage but has only shared early details without specifying the root cause.
Is this related to a previous outage in europe-west2?
Yes, as CloudSec Press reported in October 2026, previous outages in this region caused similar cascading failures.
