Not a problem for Rico

Daisuke Wakabayashi has an article in The Wall Street Journal about Sony's continuing problems with its security:

Despite spending weeks to resolve a massive internet security breach, Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer said he can't guarantee the security of its videogame network or any other Web system in the "bad new world" of cyber crime.
Mr. Stringer's comments, in a phone interview with The Wall Street Journal ahead of a New York roundtable discussion with reporters, come on the heels of a trying month for Sony. The company partially restored two of its online game systems and a streaming movie and music service over the weekend after shutting down the services for several weeks when a breach compromised the personal information of more than a hundred million account holders.
While Sony has restored part of the PlayStation Network (an online game system for its PlayStation 3 videogame console) in the U.S. and Europe, and bolstered security measures, Mr. Stringer said maintaining the service's security is a "never-ending process" and he doesn't know if anyone is "one hundred percent secure."
He said the security breach at Sony Online Entertainment, an online game service for personal-computer users and its Qriocity streaming video and music network, could lead the way to bigger problems well beyond Sony, or the gaming industry. He warned the attacks may one day target the global financial system, the power grid, or air traffic control systems. "It's the beginning, unfortunately, or the shape of things to come," said Mr. Stringer. "It's not a brave new world; it's a bad new world," he said.
The interview and roundtable were Mr. Stringer's first public comments addressing the security woes, other than a 5 May letter on Sony's PlayStation blog apologizing for the inconvenience caused by the suspension of the two services.
The problems surrounding Sony's network of videogames, movies, and music dealt a blow to Mr. Stringer's long-held strategy to marry its hardware products with content from its entertainment businesses. He has pursued that vision since becoming the company's first non-Japanese CEO in 2005, deeming it essential to Sony's survival and competition with Apple Inc.'s lineup of devices connected to its iTunes library and store.
The situation has also exposed Mr. Stringer's management to criticism, overshadowing the earnings bounce-back made by Sony after two years of losses. Mr. Stringer said it was still too early to assess the financial impact from the outage. Sony announces its full-year results on 26 May.
It has been Kazuo Hirai, the head of its videogame and consumer electronics units and Mr. Stringer's choice to one day succeed him as the head of Sony, who has been on the front lines of restoring the services and investigating the data theft, which included users' names, addresses, and, possibly, credit-card information. He said Mr. Hirai's familiarity with PSN allowed him to restore the service "faster than anyone else would". Mr. Stringer, who said his support for the network strategy hasn't wavered, saw his role as the one to ask tough questions and put together a team to get results. "If anything happened in this period that was positive, Kaz demonstrated coolness and leadership and reliability absent of disagreement and dissidence that was very impressive," he said.
In a separate interview, Mr. Hirai said Sony has done everything possible to make sure that its online systems are secure. If an attacker is still able to get around those security walls, there are safeguards in place to prevent them from gaining access to Sony's data. "We have done everything possible and reasonable to make sure that a system is secure from attack," said Mr. Hirai.
Mr. Stringer disagreed with the criticism from politicians and Internet privacy advocates that the company should have alerted subscribers to the threat of a possible data theft sooner.
Sony shut down PSN on 20 April when it found evidence of an unauthorized intrusion and possible data transfer from its servers, but it didn't reveal the data breach to users until 26 April. The company said it didn't know conclusively until 25 April that some personal information had been accessed.
Mr. Stringer said talking publicly about its suspicions before gathering evidence would be "irresponsible. We were trying to find out in a very volatile situation what had happened and when we did we relayed it," said Mr. Stringer. "If your house has been burglarized, you find out if you've lost something before you call the police," he said.
In the roundtable with reporters, Mr. Stringer said the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into the matter was still ongoing, but declined to provide an update on the findings.
As it restored some of its systems over the weekend, Sony said it strengthened data security with new technologies, while implementing additional software monitoring and vulnerability testing. It also increased levels of encryption and put in additional firewalls.
At the roundtable, Mr. Hirai told reporters that there had been no reports of any major problems since the services resumed.
Mr. Stringer said he didn't think that Sony's online security was lax. He said PSN had been in business for five years and SOE for ten years without a major breach at either service. "We had no reason to believe that our security was not good and still no reason to believe it because we have plenty of people looking at it," said Mr. Stringer. "We've learned that we just have to keep improving our security."
Saying that PlayStation Network subscribers are loyal and understanding of the situation, Mr. Stringer said the response to Sony's response among users has been positive. "We have to earn back the trust and loyalty we may have lost in this circumstance. That's our goal and that's one we have to reach," he said.
Sony announced it would give away free games as part of a "welcome back" campaign for PSN users in North America and Europe. It will also provide free movie rentals over one weekend and free membership to premium services for a limited period of time.
In the two days since the services have been restored, Mr. Hirai said only "a very small percentage" of the calls to its PlayStation help centers are from customers looking to cancel their accounts. Mr. Hirai warned, however, that it was still too early to draw conclusions based on those findings.
Mr. Stringer said he sees the tide of resentment shifting from the company to the perpetrators of the attack. Sony's problems have raised awareness about the possible dangers of such security threats. "Our case, unfortunately, is so large and the scale of the PlayStation Network so big that it's forced a lot of attention to be paid," he said. "In the long run, that'll be good for everybody else but it hasn't been a wonderful experience for Sony."

Rico says he has never even thought of playing games on-line...