14 DAY TRIAL // Last weekend saw a series of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks target plenty of online services, starting with Sony's PlayStation Network, and continuing with Blizzard's Battle.net, Riot Games' League of Legends, and much more.
While both Blizzard and Riot Games were pretty quick to remedy the issue and stop the attacks from having an effect on their servers, thereby allowing fans to continue playing League of Legends, Hearthstone, Diablo 3, and more, Sony wasn't so lucky.
Instead, its PlayStation Network buckled under the attacks. Given the fact that the PSN servers are linked to the bigger Sony Entertainment Network ones, this also led to the takedown of the different Sony Online Entertainment multiplayer games, like PlanetSide 2 or DC Universe Online.
The company did issue a statement confirming that the attacks were taking a toll on its servers but that customers shouldn't worry, as their personal user information and data, including credit card details, are safe from nefarious individuals.
However, instead of just taking the credit and mocking Sony, one of the perpetrators, FamedGod, issued a public statement expressing his or her disappointment with the Japanese company and how it could have easily implemented security measures against such attacks.
Looking back on Sony's history, I have to admit that he or she is right. Sony needs to improve the security and reliability of its PlayStation Network.
For quite a while, the PSN has buckled under different DDoS attacks, and by far, the most wide ranging was the infamous 2011 breach that saw the personal data of tens of millions of PSN accounts leak online and into the hands of nefarious individuals.
At that time, it took Sony over a month to get its online system back online and was notorious for its lack of transparency. Not even the free games, nor the new compensation measures forced by a lawsuit were enough for some people.
Many felt that, seeing as how Sony was offering access to the PlayStation Network for free to PS3 users, instead of charging money like Microsoft is doing with Xbox Live, it's not really the company's fault for having relaxed security systems.
However, now that the PlayStation Plus premium subscription is mandatory to access multiplayer on the PS4, it's time for Sony to show that it's using all that money to improve the online network and ensure that it's reliable and secure.
While Xbox Live Gold isn't exactly the best deal in gaming, Microsoft has used that money to augment its online infrastructure and to make sure that, when outages or such DDoS attacks happen, their impact is small or nonexistent.
Such attacks are bad news for gamers, in the end, but they need to serve as a wake-up call for companies like Sony to implement more safeguards, better security measures, and improved security for their systems.
There will always be people with access to multiple computers and networks that can launch such attacks, but companies can and should change their approaches to ensure that their impact is as small as possible and that they can't ruin the experience of regular customers and gamers.