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It is unbelievable how a giant company such as Sony could be easily hacked.
The company’s has taken the blame for its network and servers being so easily hacked.
Lulz Security who claims responsibility for the attack has stolen information that was entirely unencrypted. This is a warning for those who are selling products online regarding putting up the right defense for the personal information of its clients. Every company who offers similar services should learn to comply with the required industry standards such as PCI-DSS.
Between the dates of April 17 to 19 (2011), Sony realized that there had been an unauthorized intrusion on its PlayStation services. The result is that Sony had to shut down the services while the investigation continued.
The result of the investigation was that there was a recurring weakness in the PlayStation Network security infrastructure.
These attacks were just simple SQL injections against Sony’s web servers.
Some news reports indicated that Sony was running software that was terribly out of date and they had been pre-warned.
It seems that the damage had a wider reach and complication than had been originally thought of. As soon as the outages hit on April 21, there was mass frustration for gamers who were addicted to PlayStation online gaming and Qriocity customers.
Millions of PlayStation Network users were worried about the safety of their personal information that was stolen from Sony.
Anybody who is in their situation would really worry for what purpose their credit card details and other personal information will be used for.
The customer details that were placed in a compromising situation totals up to seventy-seven million users.
For those who might be stressing out on what specific information has been stolen from them, there is not much you can do about it.
For the meantime the simple solution would be to immediately change your PSN password as soon as you come back online. If you have been guilty of using the same password elsewhere, you need to use a different password for each site for security reasons.
If however, you have received an email purportedly coming from Sony, do not reply since
Sony stated they will not email PSN users requesting for their personal details.
Some hackers would definitely take this opportunity to lay wait for Sony PSN users to use for their own nefarious purpose.
Your personal data that might have been compromised is as follows:
• Your complete name
• Your complete residential address which includes your city, state and zip code
• Country
• E-mail address
• Your Birthday
• PlayStation Network Password and login name
From now on you need to closely monitor your credit card statements to look for any unusual transactions so that you can immediately contact your bank or credit card company about it.
Another option would be to get a copy of your credit report from the three major bureaus every quarter.
The credit bureau also offers subscription services that monitor your account to alert you when there is suspicious activity.
When asked about the subject of refunds, Sony stated that once its full services are restored they will assess the situation to determine what course of action to take.
According to Sony they are now rebuilding their service by consulting third party security experts.
This move is like plugging security holes in the network.
Sony has come up with a brand new position because of the hacking incident: a new chief information security officer, which may be one of their moves to make amends and see to it that the same incident will never happen again.
Finally, the only solution that was given by experts is for Sony to spend time and money on the technology to tighten its network security.
To have an excellent type of security, the concern is not just about technology, but more of making the employees aware of the business process as they go on with their daily activities.
In addition to this, they need to rebuild trust because of their damaged reputation.
In a response coming from Sony when they faced the subcommittee who was investigating the breach they released this statement: “Worldwide, countries and businesses will have to come together to ensure the safety of commerce over the Internet and find ways to combat cybercrime and cyber terrorism.”
In addition to this, Sony promised to put additional firewalls in place.
To be fair, Sony has apologized for the inconvenience to millions of its users.
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