IT Disaster: Personal chat data of 145,000 Microsoft Teams users erased at KPMG

Due to software upgrade, we have seen several IT disasters in the past. Recently, KPMG, a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations, suffered a major IT disaster. KPMG has been using Microsoft Teams as its internal communication tool for all its employees worldwide.

Here’s what happend at KPMG:

• IT executive tried to remove a single user’s account from an active retention policy on Saturday, August 15.
• In the execution of this change, a human error was made, and the policy was applied to the entire KPMG Teams deployment instead of the specific account.
• As a result, the entire personal chat histories of all 145,000 employees are now gone forever.

KPMG went to Microsoft for help, but Microsoft replied that the Teams chat data is not recoverable. In order to avoid such events in the future, KPMG is working with Microsoft to improve policy design and behavior in Microsoft Teams.

Source: The Register