The PSN has been up for a few days now, in most of the world. However, in Japan, the country where Sony calls home, the network has yet to be restored due to governmental blocks in place before it can be separately verified that the new infrastructure is secure. Now at least one security expert in Australia has taken a similar stance.
Bill Caelli, Senior Research Scientist at the Information Security Institute in the Queensland University of Technology, recently spoke with The Australian, a website for the region. He stated that in his opinion the government should have intervened with the restart of the PlayStation Network, to have its new security tested by an outside party. Mr. Caelli begs the question: “Why is it that in the IT industry enterprises certify themselves?” He claims that the average consumer has “no way of assessing the assurances given by the owners of the system themselves.” Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim stated that an investigation into the incident is currently in progress, and he was also pondering if the commission should seek out more information from Sony.
Have Sony disclosed enough information, or should governments play a more active role in determining if any corporation’s actions are sufficient following a massive data and privacy leak like the one Sony has just gone through? The PSN service is currently up in Australia, but of course we will update you if and when the situation changes.
Roger Thompson, AVG’s Chief Research Officer also recommended holding off inputting your credit card details straight away in an exclusive interview (Part 1, Part 2) with PlayStation LifeStyle during the PSN downtime.
