Sony Executive Corporate President, Kazuo Hirai, held a press conference last night where he addressed the PSN outage, the extent of the issues surrounding personal information loss, and the ‘Welcome Back Package” that will accompany the return of service. He stated that the delay in response to the original hack was due to the necessary investigation into exactly what had happened. Hirai also clarified that around 10 million accounts with credit cards were compromised.
In regards to the return of PSN services, the official word is that some will be back within a week, but it will take upwards of a month to get all services back online. Online play should be among the earlier services to be restored.
The initial roll-out of live features due later this week include:
- Restoration of Online game-play across the PlayStation®3 (PS3) and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) systems
-This includes titles requiring online verification and downloaded games- Access to Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity for PS3/PSP for existing subscribers
- Access to account management and password reset
- Access to download un-expired Movie Rentals on PS3, PSP and MediaGo
- PlayStation®Home
- Friends List
- Chat Functionality
Sony also detailed some of the new security measures being put in place to make sure that this sort of incident cannot happen again. Here are a few they point out:
- Added automated software monitoring and configuration management to help defend against new attacks
- Enhanced levels of data protection and encryption
- Enhanced ability to detect software intrusions within the network, unauthorized access and unusual activity patterns
- Implementation of additional firewalls
The “Welcome Back Package” offered by Sony will include the following:
- Each territory will be offering selected PlayStation entertainment content for free download. Specific details of this content will be announced in each region soon.
- All existing PlayStation Network customers will be provided with 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service. Current members of PlayStation Plus will receive 30 days free service.
- Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity subscribers (in countries where the service is available) will receive 30 days free service.
It is a nice gesture, but it feels like Sony is offering the bare minimum here, especially when you consider that these services only continue to be useful if you continue to pay for them after the free 30 day period.
[Source: Sony Press Release]
