http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/229402895 By Mathew J. Schwartz InformationWeek May 05, 2011 Sony said that it's called in three computer security and forensics firms to help investigate the data breaches that compromised the user account information of more than 100 million of its customers. The firms named by Sony are Data Forte, Guidance Software, and Protiviti. Sony brought in some of those digital forensic investigators--and also notified the FBI about the breach--on April 22, the day after its network engineers first suspected that its systems had been breached. As the scale of the breach became apparent, growing to include not only the PlayStation Network and Qriocity service, but also the Sony Online Entertainment games service, Sony began calling in the other forensics companies. But government officials--and not a few customers--have been critical about what they see as Sony's slow response to resolving the breach and restoring services, and political pressure is mounting. According to Bloomberg News, Sony has been subpoenaed by New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who is "seeking information on what Sony told customers about the security of their networks, as part of a consumer protection inquiry." So, what exactly are Sony and its digital forensic investigators doing, and why haven't services been restored yet? "My guess right now is they're still trying, to a certain extent, to determine what happened," said Alex Cox, principal research analyst at NetWitness, which sells network-monitoring appliances. "When you talk intrusion analysis and breach analysis, it's a pretty specialized skill set and typically one that companies don't have internally. Because hopefully, it's infrequent enough that people don't need to have their own internal teams. But the fact that Sony is bringing in outside help tells me that they don't have the staffing." [...] ___________________________________________________________ Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management, Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure. http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/Received on Fri May 06 2011 - 00:06:30 PDT
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