Saturday, May 14, 2011

PSN back up by end of May?

In a recent statement issued by Sony, they claimed that they will be aiming to restore full functionality of the PS network (PSN) by the end of May. The PSN, which was hacked, was shut down on 20th April by Sony after a security breach was discovered. An investigation into how the details of more than 100 million users were compromised is still on-going. Sony's spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka stated that the company had missed their self-imposed deadline of restarting parts of the network by the weekend, after claims that they would be restoring services last week.

However, it has come to light that the Sony Online Entertainment network (SOE) had also come under attack putting a further 25 million users at risk. To make matters worse, Sony isn't yet even aware of the full extent of the damage done to SOE server. Nick Caplin, Sony's Head of Communications stated that are unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers in a blog post updating users on Sony's website.

Although some users are appreciative that Sony is ensuring that their security is water-tight, many are frustrated and upset at the constant delays and false promises. It's not only the users who are being affected by the downtime, but also business who rely on the PSN to distribute their content. Christian Svensson of Capcom added his voice to the complaints and stated that his company was losing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars due to the network shut down. Many users go on to complain that the way Sony has dealt with the situation, especially after the hack has led them to be unsympathetic.

With millions of personal details being obtained and hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers released, Sony may feel the world crumbling around them as lawsuit after lawsuit is filed against them after their failure to inform users that their credit card information may have been stolen in a timely fashion. With this being the most significant and largest digital theft in history, is the future looking bleak for Sony?