Sony lost $177 billion when its system was hacked. The PlayStation Network became a victim of external intrusion after the Sony's PlayStation Network prevented its users to play the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. The attack took place on April 17 and April 19, 2011, that forced the company to shut down the PlayStation Network. Sony confirmed that the personal identification details for each member of at least 77 million users were stolen. The shut down lasted for twenty four days (Leo, 2011).
Sony had admitted on its official PlayStation Blog in 2011 that it was aware that the PlayStation Network malfunctioned. The PlayStation 3 users were notified through email that the network had to undergo maintenance and asked for them to be patient. The company informed them that investigation has taken place and at least one or two days to make the system to continue its normal operations (International Business 5).
After the hacking of its system, Sony suspended the PlayStation Network all over the globe. A few days later, the spokesman of the company in the person of Patrick Seybold appeased the public in the PlayStation Blog that the company is doing its best to fix the network and the time of completion cannot be determined. Sony apologized to the public after the personal information of the players had been compromised after the Sony system was maliciously hacked (International Business 5). Sony was able to inform the public that the system will be up and running on the first week of May 2011. The “Welcome Back” program was displayed to the customers who became victims of the outage. The expected net loss of the company is approximately 360 billion yen or $4.4 billion based on the report of Sony Corporation (Leo, 2011).
References:
International Business, T. (5). PlayStation hack costs Sony "only" $170 million. International Business Times.
International Business, T. (5). Identity Protection for Sony Playstation Hack. International
Business Times.
Leo, L. (2011). Sony bows to inevitable over Playstation hack. Times, The (United Kingdom), 11.
