Sony Data Breach Grows by 25 Million – $1 Billion Price Tag

Sony just admitted this week that their Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) division, which they though was not affected by the recent breach, has also been compromised. They believe that the hackers stole personal information from an additional 25 million users and that the breach included credit card information.

In an unrelated article, Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Nobuo Kurahashi estimated the cost of Sony’s recovery from the data breaches to be approximately $1.25 billion:

Kurahashi estimates that the data breach will cost Sony about Y100 billion, or $1.25 billion from lost business, various compensation costs and new investments–assuming that no additional security problems emerge. The cyber attacks on Sony in recent weeks involved the theft of personal data that include names, passwords and addresses from accounts on its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment gaming services. Sony has also said that more than 10 million credit-card numbers may have been compromised.

The return on investment of Sony simply protecting their customer data properly in the first place would be thousand-fold. But if companies were doing more to protect themselves before the attack, what would we write about?

John Sileo’s motivational keynote speeches train organizations to play aggressive information offense before the attack, whether that is identity theft, data breach, cyber crime, social networking exposure or human fraud. Learn more at www.ThinkLikeASpy.com or call him directly on 800.258.8076.