Sir Howard Stringer defends Sony's response to PSN hack
updated 07:05 am EDT, Wed May 18, 2011
Sony not slow, no guarantee of 100% security
Sir Howard Stringer has defended Sony’s response to the massive data breach that exposed user information to hackers. Numerous critics have lambasted Sony for waiting up to a week before notifying customers of the nature of the attack on its servers after first shutting them down without notice. In an interview with the New York Times, Stringer claimed that “[Sony] reported quickly.”
Stringer also claimed that that the hack was the largest of its kind on a company, and that “we still have a lot of investigation to do to find out how this happened, but we’re not there yet.” Attempting to reassure customers, Stringer said that Sony has now implemented measures to bolster its security across all of its products and services. “In every level of the company we are examining security,” he said. “From televisions to e-books, and onwards.”
Sony 2IC, Kaz Hirai added that in addition to the new security measures, Sony has created new managerial-level security positions. Their key responsibility is to “set up a system to avoid this type of event again — putting a new system in place.”
However, in an interview with Bloomberg on the matter, Stringer was not prepared to guarantee Sony customers that their personal information including credit card details will not suffer the same exposure again. "Nobody's system is 100 percent secure," Stringer told Bloomberg. "This is a hiccup in the road to a network future."
