Sony fined £250,000 over The Great PSN Hack of 2011

Sony fined £250,000 over The Great PSN Hack of 2011

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Sony has been slapped with a considerable fine for the 2011 PlayStation Network hack, which exposed the personal details of an estimated 77m customers.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said the Japanese Giant must pay £250,000 for one of the "most serious" breaches of the Data Protection Act it has ever dealt with.

The regulator said Sony should have had better protections in place, given the amount of credit cards it had on file, and accused it of putting its trusting users at serious risk of identity theft.

David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data pro tection at the ICO, said: "There's no disguising that this is a business that should have known better. It is a company that trades on its technical expertise, and there's no doubt in my mind that they had access to both the technical knowledge and the resources to keep this information safe."

Sony to appeal

Sony said it would be appealing against the verdict and claimed it was still building more layers of defence against future accounts.

The company said in a statement: "Criminal attacks on electronic networks are a real and growing aspect of 21st century life and Sony continually works to strengthen our systems, building in multiple layers of defence and working to make our networks safe, secure and resilient.

"The reliability of our network services and the security of our consumers' information are of the utmost importance to us, and we are appreciative that our network services are used by even more people around the world tod ay than at the time of the criminal attack."

The Summer of Hack

The April 2011 hack dominated the TechRadar news headlines for weeks, sparking a spree of attacks on technology and gaming companies, including Nintendo, Codemasters and even Apple.

The attack knocked down the PSN for weeks, meaning PlayStation 3 owners were unable to play online, or access their accounts.

During the time offline, Sony apologised profusely, dis hed out a hefty compensation package to users and shored up its defences to ensure any repeat attack wouldn't be successful.

No one group has ever claimed responsibility and, although it was widely suspected, the hacking collective known as Anonymous denied it had masterminded the attack.