14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has been recently blamed for a number of security issues with the Xbox Live service and, in order to mark Safer Internet Day, the company has issued a statement showing its commitment to keeping Xbox Live users as safe as possible.
Alex Gardner, who is the general manager working on the Xbox Live service, stated, “While we here at Xbox have no evidence of a security breach in the Xbox LIVE service, that is of little comfort to our members whose accounts have been compromised by malicious and illegal attacks.”
He added, “Recovering compromised accounts – in a timely manner – is also a priority and an area where we’ve made, and will continue to make, improvements. We have invested more resources in our account recovery process and as a result, for most new fraud cases we are now able to investigate and return accounts within three days.”
Gardner also says that Microsoft is trying to make the account recuperation process even faster, but he admits that there still are problems with some individual cases and that some refunds are harder to process than others.
The general manager admitted that, no matter how good the company’s security and how well behaved the users are, the groups that are aiming to steal identities will continue to find new ways of getting information and passwords.
The primary causes for compromised accounts on the Xbox Live service were said to be malware, phishing, duplicate passwords and social engineering.
Xbox Live is central to the experience that Microsoft offers via the Xbox 360 home console because it powers the multiplayer component of big titles and also allows players to get access to other types of content.
As the company pushes ahead with the 10-year business plan for the Xbox 360, the importance of Live will increase as more non-gamers are attracted to the home console from Microsoft.