Sony chief Sir Howard Stringer on Tuesday described the disastrous PlayStation Network outage as a "hiccup," and said that no network is 100 percent secure.
In a series of interviews with Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal, Stringer said the company is no closer to finding the culprit. Sony is now focused on the security challenges ahead; namely, staying one step ahead of cyber criminals.
"Nobody's system is 100 percent secure," Stringer told Bloomberg. "This is a hiccup in the road to a network future."
The PlayStation Network went down on April 20, with Sony Online Entertainment following suit on May 2. Some systems finally started coming back online on Sunday, but issues remain.
When Sony first learned of the breach, Sony's Kazuo Hirai informed Stringer before shutting down the system. "Kaz and I together worked out what we need to do," Stringer told Bloomberg.
Stringer told the Journal, meanwhile, that securing a network is a "never-ending process."
"It's one of those dynamic situations where the bad guys get better and the good guys have to keep getting better too," Stringer said.
Sony has been working with law enforcement to track down the hackers. So far, the only thing the company has discussed publicly is that one of its SOE servers included mention of the clandestine cyber-group Anonymous. Though a group spokesman has denied involvement, it has launched distributed denial of service attacks against Sony for suing PS3 hackers.
"We know the denial-of-service attacks were initiated by Anonymous because they said they were, but that's really all we know," Stringer told the Journal.
On Monday, Sony unveiled some of the welcome-back initiatives it will offer customers who stuck around during the outage. When asked how he thinks the downtime will affect its customer base, Stringer said "PlayStation Network subscribers are more forgiving because they are essentially more loyal and understanding of the situation more than anybody else."
The company is also offering ID theft protection since some credit cards might be compromised, which altogether won't exactly be cheap. Stringer told the FT that Sony hasn't yet quantified a number "because we're still investigating."