Sony: A Lesson in What Not to Do

Everyone’s heard of the problems Sony’s been having by now, including Congress. (Though Sony has some words in reply to the lawmakers.) They may even be fined in the UK. The problem is that, in my opinion, everything about this situation was handled improperly by Sony. And I don’t even own or use a PlayStation. Or subscribe to Sony Online Entertainment products. But if I did, I would be very mad right now.

First, Sony’s PlayStation Network went down. People got error messages and what did Sony have to say about it? Nothing. They shut it down and then said that it was down. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that they finally told people that in intrusion had happened and they shut the system down. By that point, the attack had happened close to a week earlier. And Sony still didn’t have answers. They didn’t know how much information was taken, what information, and, most importantly, if credit cards were part of the stolen information. Around two weeks after the intrusion, Sony still doesn’t know if credit card numbers were stolen for sure, though they now know that information about all 77 million users was taken.

Sony is facing a PR disaster here. And they brought it upon themselves. They could have avoided much of the bad press if they had stated what they had known much faster. Hopefully companies in the future realize that transparency goes a long way in leading to customer happiness.