Cloud Billing - July 22nd, 2022 [Feature]

## Feature **Secure the link between a project and its billing account** In the _Cloud Billing Console_, you can now [lock the link](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/secure-project-billing-account-link) between a project and its Cloud Billing account, in order to prevent accidental changes to the billing state, such as disabling billing or moving the project to a different billing account. You can also unlock this protected state if you want to unlink a project from a Cloud Billing account. Google Cloud projects contain all the resources required for a system to operate. To pay for the usage of the Cloud resources (such as Compute Engine or Storage), each project must be linked to an active Cloud Billing account. If you unlink the project from a billing account, you disable billing on that project. When billing is disabled on a project, all resources contained within the project will shut down, which can cause outages to your normal business operation. To prevent unintentional outages due to billing issues, lock your valuable projects to their linked billing account. Locking creates a two-step process to change the billing state of a project, improving billing reliability and reducing accidental outages due to billing issues. [Learn how to secure the link between a project and a Cloud Billing account](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/secure-project-billing-account-link).