14 DAY TRIAL // Sony is still feeling the effects of the April 2011 PlayStation Network hacks, and the company is deploying a new range of sociological tools in order to prevent or detect and then eliminate all threats aimed at the recently renamed Sony Entertainment Network.
Brett Wahlin, who is the Chief Security Officer at Sony, has stated when speaking with SC Magazine that, “The types of attacks we see are by groups with social agendas.
“The methods they use aren’t the same as the state-sponsored guys. At Sony, we are modifying our programs to deal less with state-sponsored and more with socially-motivated hackers.”
Wahlin added, “We are looking to see if there are there key elements within a person’s interaction with their environment. That could be interaction with badging systems, with telephones - when and who do they call - and with systems like browser habits and applications used.
“All these things allow us to set up a pattern for users, so when something different happens we can respond.”
Sony will closely monitor the behavior of all its employees, regardless of location and responsibility, in order to make sure that none of them displays abnormal behavior, which could be a sign that they have been compromised and they are being used by an outside organization to gain access.
The company is also trying to find patterns within customer spending on the Sony Entertainment Network in order to make sure that it can quickly track and eliminate those accounts that use stolen credit card data to buy content.
Last year the PSN was down for more than one month after an unknown group of attackers compromised the network and managed to get access to sensitive personal information, including the credit card data used by hundreds of thousands of users.
Sony has quickly introduced new security measures and promised that a repeat of the attack was impossible.