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Overnight in Tokyo, Sony's Kaz Hirai held a press conference to reveal the company's plan for getting its PlayStation Network service back online following data theft and subsequent downtime that the service has been struggling with for the past two weeks. "Following a criminal cyber-attack on the company's data-center located in San Diego, California, U.S.A., SNEI [Sony Network Entertainment International] quickly turned off the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, engaged multiple expert information security firms over the course of several days and conducted an extensive audit of the system," reads a press statement. "Since then, the company has implemented a variety of new security measures to provide greater protection of personal information. SNEI and its third-party experts have conducted extensive tests to verify the security strength of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. With these measures in place, SCE and SNEI plan to start a phased rollout by region of the services shortly."
The main bullet points are that PSN service will return this week, with most but not all of the features available, and when anyone tries to access it they will be forced to change their password. Sony is also promising it has implemented new levels of security and that it will be moving its data center location shortly, though the company's statement claims there is still "no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken."
As a 'make good' from Sony, when customers start up PSN next week, they will be greeted with a "Welcome Back" program that will include yet-to-be-named free content for download, 30 free days of PlayStation Plus service (or an extended 30 days for current subscribers), and 30 free days of the company's Qriocity music service.
For complete details from Sony's side in all this, check out the press release just posted to the PlayStation Blog.
I don't play a lot of online stuff so this really wasn't to big of a deal for me, just nice to see there getting it back up, and offering some sort of free perks for the everyone.
