Google Cloud says it will reimburse customers up to $1 million if they’re victims of a crypto-mining scam

Thomas Kurian is CEO of Google Cloud. David Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images

The cloud computing arm of Google announced on Thursday that it will reimburse customers for up to $1 million in costs from the unauthorized use of their accounts for crypto mining.

Those who enroll in the cloud provider’s premium tier of Security Command Center, or Google Cloud’s layer of security features, will be eligible for the added protection, Google said in a blog post announcing the new policy.

“We have enough cryptocurrency mining detection capabilities built into Security Command Center now that we feel confident in our ability to prevent crypto mining from happening,” Jess Leroy, a senior director of product management at Google Cloud, told Fortune. “We thought that this was a great way to put our money where our mouth is.”

Crypto-mining attacks can occur after hackers gain access to a user’s cloud account. Once they’re in, they rapidly accelerate how much computing power the account holders use in order to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Monero. As the computing power consumed increases, so do the costs cloud providers unknowingly bill victims.

In fact, nearly two-thirds of all hacked cloud accounts were used to mine crypto in the second quarter of 2022, Google said in a research report published in September. 

“Crypto-mining attacks continue to be a serious security and financial issue for organizations who do not have the right preventative controls and threat detection capabilities in their cloud environments,” Philip Bues, a researcher at International Data Corporation who follows cloud security trends, said in a statement.

The financial protections Google Cloud has introduced for crypto mining follows a previous commitment to reimburse customers who are victims of DDoS attacks, or when bad actors flood a website with traffic in order to temporarily paralyze it, Google Cloud’s Leroy told Fortune.

The cloud provider’s crypto-mining protections join its suite of Web3 offerings as the third-largest cloud services firm by market share, according to data from Synergy Research Group, looks to adapt its business to rising interest in crypto.

Google Cloud has announced a suite of partnerships with big-name players in Web3, including Nansen, Coinbase, and BNB Chain. It’s even unveiled a Web3 startup program that provides developers a slew of discounts on crypto products as well as access to millions in funds from foundations that support protocols like Solana, Polygon, and Aptos.