PSN

There were problems in both the Sony and Microsoft camps yesterday, though in both cases the situations are being dealt with promptly. However one company is turning a problem into a source of good will, and the other seems more intent on deflecting blame. Can you guess which is which?

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Sony, and I suspect it’s about to get much much worse.

Sony Online Entertainment took its systems offline yesterday after it was discovered that the PSN intrusion had affected their servers as well. Meanwhile SCEA continues doing damage control relating to the potentially stolen PSN data.

Personal data was stolen, but no evidence that credit card numbers were obtained (though they can't rule out the possibility). Still Sony urges caution and offers resources for insuring customer safety. But if the break-in happened between April 17th & 19th, why are they just reporting the data stolen today?

Sony is into its 5th day of a total Playstation Network outage. While we wait to learn the details of what happened, I'm more interested in why it happened now. Sony has confirmed that this is an outside attack, so what was the trigger? And in general terms, what does this outage (and the problems Amazon has had recently) mean for our growing dependence on 'the cloud?"