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Data Clinic's
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Sony Belligerence Creating Data Recovery and Security Risks
Sony has increased the risk of suffering security breaches at the hands of hackers, thanks to its hard-line policy on hackers, according to one leading IT security expert.
The electronics giant suffered a major security breach on its PlayStation Network towards the end of April, in which the private details of 77 million users were made available online. In June the hacker group Lulz Security then which broke into Sonypictures.com and removed the private details of over 1 million users of the PlayStation Network. In a statement the hackers boasted: “from a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING,” and posed the question: “Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?”
Many users did indeed ask themselves that question, and IT security expert Ian Shaw of MWR InfoSecurity suggested that Sony had unwittingly invited the malicious activity on its site. He suggested that by clamping down hard on anyone trying to hack into its PS3 games console, it had alienated a section of powerful hackers and provoked their anger. This, combined with Sony’s aggressive stance on digital rights management, might, Mr Shaw suggested, have been enough to highlight the company as a legitimate target for the hacker community.
“If they take that sort of approach, then that in itself would make them no friends in the hacker community,” said Mr Shaw. He went on to also suggest that the significant levels of publicity the hack received in the press could also have spurred other subsequent attacks on other games developers.
Attacks such as these are not only PR-nightmares for companies, but also highlight the importance of both data security and data recovery services. Even without external interference, hard disk systems can fail, requiring the services of hard disk recovery specialists to prevent confidential data being lost or leaked.