SONY DROP THE BALL

I love Sony and their products.  I have done for many years and have always stood and defended them against those who have chosen to attack the company for one reason or another down the years.  However in light of what has happened in the past week with regards to the PSN outage and the subsequent revelation that PS3 users private information has been compromised, I find it impossible to defend them anymore.

Having gone to considerable lengths to make sure I secure as much personal information as I can, I am outraged and angered at Sony's sheer negligence when it has come to the data I have given them in order to take advantage of their online service.  It seems that the data has handled and cared for in a slip-shod manner ill fitting a major international corporation like Sony.  The very thought that I now have to spend more time being extra vigilant because Sony have dropped the ball big time is, frankly, wholly unacceptable and Sony need to be dragged over the coals for this.

Of course the hackers are the perpetrators of the crime, of that there is no doubt.  However if you entrust someone to look after your car and they leave it parked with the keys in the ignition the person who has been negligent is just as much to blame as the opportunist thief who takes the vehicle.  In my previous blog I defended Sony but this was before it came to light what the true nature of the intrusion was and what information had been accessed.

How can end users ever be expected to have confidence in Sony again?  If the PSN was hacked in such a manner, how on Earth can we be expected to trust Sony with our personal information or credit card details.  Their total disregard for implementing the correct data protection procedures sticks of a rank negligent attitude towards their responsibilities towards their customers.  It seems that the excuse that the PSN is free so you cannot expect too much from it has filtered through to those responsible for actually securing it.  You may, with justification, say that one has nothing to do with the other but it is hard not to imagine that the amateur way the PSN has been implemented since 2007 hasn't been reflected in the security and or lack of.

Right from the moment the PS3 was hacked many months ago now, Sony should have shown a greater degree of responsibility but instead they threw out a firmware update to address the problem that was hacked within hours rendering it useless.  The warnings were there, does it look like Sony heeded them after the events of the past week?

Sony's main priority has been a belligerent attitude, throwing their weight around and suing all and sundry, stirring up a hornets nest which they had no means to defend against and the result is that end users...correction...innocent end users personal information has been compromised.  Instead of wasting time trying to sue the hackers into submission they should have invested those resources into securing their laughable security.

Sony have dropped the ball in a major way and they need to pay the price.  Sadly it may be too late for them now as I am sure that customer confidence in them will no hit an all time low.  What a stupid thing to happen.