Sony chief Stringer offers 1 million insurance cover: only to US gamers

The chief of Sony, Sir Howard Stringer has finally spoken out about the security breach on the Playstation Network. Up until now, he has left the apologies to his number 2 Kazuo Hirai. Stringer announced that Sony have incorporated a new $1 identity theft insurance policy for each user in the future.

It has been a really rough month for Sony as they try and contain the fall out from the public disaster that revolved around a recent hack into the Playstation network. Millions of people have had their accounts and personal information compromised and Sony were slow to inform customers of the severity of the situation.

Stringer has finally stepped in himself after Sony's share price dropped 4% in trading yesterday. Investors are concerned about the ultimate cost of these attacks. Stringer has said in a blog post that there is “no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to monitor the situation closely”.

He also added that Sony are announcing plans for improve security measures to “protect your information better than ever” and announced an insurance policy to “cover identity restoration costs, legal defense expenses, and lost wages that occur within 12 months after the stolen identity event”. The kicker? it is only for US gamers.

He said that announcements in other areas would follow soon.

He said “As a company we – and I – apologise for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack. Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber-attack we've all experienced and on fixing it. We are working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world to apprehend those responsible.”

“I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It's a fair question,” he added. “As soon as we discovered the potential scope of the intrusion, we shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired some of the best technical experts in the field to determine what happened. I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner.”

Stringer also said that the network should be restored in the ‘coming days'. So we should see it back up and running next week. They are offering a ‘welcome back' package to customers, which will give people a months access to its premium level service.

KitGuru says: Will Sony ever truly recover from this and regain the faith of the public? Microsoft must be chuckling behind closed doors.

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