Sony Deserves Acknowledgement

So the PlayStation network has been down for over a week. Since it was turned off rumours have bounced around the Internet, information has been stolen and PlayStation 3 users have been without an online service. Has Sony done the right things or could it have done a better job?

While obviously it’s an opinion there are a number of things that support either side.

Sony clearly took the PlayStation network down for a reason and that reason was the security of been breached allowing personal information including credit card details to be taken from millions of accounts. I believe this is the most important point, that Sony took the network down stopping the theft of even more information. Of course it also asks a few questions of Sony.

Firstly, shouldn’t and multibillion dollar company such as Sony have had the most up-to-date security for the PlayStation network. While I do not doubt the security was pretty strong surely up-to-date security wouldn’t have been able to be hacked, or at least flagged a warning earlier that something was wrong.

Secondly Sony must’ve known straight away the extent of the PlayStation network hack, which begs the question why in the first few days was a detailed announcement not made? Certainly for the first few days a lot of PlayStation network users had no idea of the scale of the hacking. While the information was eventually processed by Sony, sending out e-mails to every PlayStation network user and also posting on the official PlayStation blog, releasing information on the hacking earlier may have curved a lot of the rumours.

Fortunately the Sony they seemingly have started to get themselves out of the very big hole. Rebuilding the PlayStation network with more security and also announcing that it should be up this week, definitely went towards helping their cause. There are a few other points that majorly have helped their cause including gifts and the PlayStation wallet reimbursement.

Kaz Hirai announced at the PlayStation network news conference that Sony would reimburse any PSN wallet money that had been removed by the hackers: clearly a nice gesture the gifts apparently don’t end there. On the face of it, by their own decision Sony has decided to give PSN users a gift for the inconvenience.

While many called the compensation for the lack of an online service it’s nice that not much pressure really had to be put on Sony, before they even announced they were looking into ways to say thank you for people’s patience. No matter what the free content is that Sony give out it certainly is a good way to get people back on your side.

Lastly Sony even helped out its ‘enemies’ in the form of a hacking group Anonymous, who came under a lot of fire. It’s well-known that Sony and Anonymous hands exactly gotten along well but Sony surprisingly still help stop the group being under fire from angered PSN users by stating it wasn’t the hacking group.

Overall I think Sony is done a relatively good job of handling the PlayStation hacking situation. While of course they could have got information out quicker and possibly had better security they appear to be doing everything in their power to fix the problem. This is why after the situation has ended I think Sony deserves some acknowledgement.