Sunday Thoughts: Moving On

Today saw Sony Computer Entertainment begin the long and arduous process of rebuilding their customer’s faith. The PSN hack and subsequent down time has, regardless of what some would wish to believe, been an egregious mess of PR for the company. That press conference this morning began to set the company’s relationship with its consumers back on track.

For me, the most impressive thing about SCE’s conference today was the humility on show. I think that’s what I wanted more than any tokenism of compensation or assurances of beefed up security measures. After all, it really doesn’t matter to me personally if SCE promise that my details will be safe next month. The unfortunate fact is that they weren’t safe last month. No assurances for the future can change what happened in the past. Any promise of extra security is, using the tiring expression, locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Of course, there will always be the drum banging of the faithful tribe but I really can’t see any excuse for how our data was kept. You might say it wasn’t SCE’s fault because they didn’t ask to be hacked. There is certainly some truth in that but when we divulged our data to SCE, we were trusting them to look after it. Make all the excuses you want but the fact remains that we trusted them with something precious and they lost it.

Others may attempt to defend the loss by saying that other companies store data in a similar way so it could have happened to any one of them. That may also be true but it is completely irrelevant to the issue. The data we trusted in SCE’s hands was lost. If it had happened to any other company I would be just as annoyed and I sincerely hope that this fiasco will prompt anybody who stores our data to reevaluate their processes and take measures to ensure that this is as unlikely as possible to happen to them.

The question isn’t whether SCE did enough to keep our data safe (clearly the answer to that one is “no”). The question isn’t even whether they did anything less than other companies do with similar data. The question is: could they have done more? If the answer to that is “yes” then I think they sold their customers short. Judging from the ashen complexions and grave expressions on the faces of those apologising this morning, so do they.

It’s certainly true that SCE do not deserve to stand alone in shouldering the blame for this problem. Let’s not forget that any precious thing is perfectly safe as long as nobody is looking for it. Without the hacker, we wouldn’t have the problem. So it’s perfectly reasonable to want to level some blame in the direction of the person or persons who actually climbed in through the window and took the plate of cookies. But that doesn’t absolve SCE of the responsibility for making sure the window was locked properly.

I think that what the press conference held in Japan today proved was that SCE know they’re largely to blame for the loss and ensuing media furore. Despite what a small hardcore of fans have been attempting to claim around the internet, SCE admit that it’s their fault. For me, this is much more important than giving me some free store content. A genuine, honest apology was all I needed from the outset. Now they’ve offered one, I can happily forgive the issue and move on to rebuilding my own personal trust in the company.

The loss of data is upsetting but there is no system that is 100 percent secure. It is blatantly obvious that SCE wouldn’t have wished for this but it happened. The important thing is how it’s dealt with.

For the first week of the downtime I don’t think it was dealt with well at all. Several blog posts which all said essentially the same thing and even what they did divulge was very little. I was frustrated that a large company, so reliant on a faithful fan base, could be so opaque. I think the lack of communication only served to feed the rumours that people had no choice but to consider plausible – in varying degrees – simply because nobody was denying them and there was no concrete proof that they were incorrect.

The start of the second week wasn’t much more enlightening, although a slightly more detailed response was issued. It was still personally frustrating to see a company I admire being so closed to the fears of its customers. To my mind, that changed with today’s press conference. I would personally have been much more relaxed if SCE had come out a week ago and said “yes, we messed up a bit and we’re doing everything we can to find out exactly how badly. Sorry about that”. I could have forgiven the transgression immediately if they’d been a little more communicative and humble. Now they have held their hands up and apologised for the incident, I have no qualms in offering them my full support (such as it is).

Of course, the incident did still happen and attempting to ignore that would be profoundly foolish. SCE are not going to try ignoring it. There’ll be no papering over the cracks from them as they endeavour to show their existing and potential customers that theirs are safe hands once again. I believe that as responsible consumers, we have to take a small portion of blame for the loss of data too. Are we too quick to assume trustworthiness? We should certainly all use the incident to assess our own habits with our data and evaluate whether there’s anything more we can do to keep ourselves more secure.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that the incident occurred. What is done, is done. The horse is in the fields. All we can do now is attempt to ensure a more secure stable in the future. Oh, and look forward to Portal 2 online co-op, of course…