UK Regulators Fine Sony £250,000 Over PlayStation Network Hack

Back in the first half of 2011, Sony ran into a lot of troubles when the PlayStation network was hacked and a bulk of user details were compromised by the hackers. Although Sony has ramped up its security features since, the regulators in U.K. have no intentions of letting this slide and have fined Sony £250,000.


playstation network

It may sound surprising that the regulators are going after the very company which had to suffer due to the network hack. The regulators, however, seem to think that Sony could have placed far better security features in place and avoided the hack. And since the company didn’t, they deem it fit to fine it with a significant amount so that it takes a lesson from the entire episode.

According to the Information  Commissioners’s Officer, there was ‘no disguising that Sony is a business that should have known better.’ Clearly, the regulators are not on friendly terms with the company.

Sony hasn’t taken the news calmly and has spoken out against it, citing that it ‘strongly disagrees’ with ICO’s verdict. While the company gears up to launch an appeal against the ruling, PlayStation Europe has noted that, ‘the ICO recognizes Sony was the victim of ‘a focused and determined criminal attack’ and that ‘there is no evidence that encrypted payment card details were accessed’, and that ‘personal data is unlikely to have been used for fraudulent purposes.’

ICO is yet to make the details of its ruling public so that the users can decide whether or not the punishment dished out to Sony is based on substantiated proof.

Courtesy: Destructoid

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Salman

Salman Latif is a software engineer with a specific interest in social media, big data and real-world solutions using the two.Other than that, he is a bit of a gypsy. He also writes in his own blog. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter .

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