For the last week the gossip and tech industry websites have been full of revelations gleaned from a massive hack into the network of entertainment company Sony.
Sadly it isn’t surprising that Sony that targeted in that hack, 2011 was described by this site as the ‘year of the hack’ and at the time I wondered when corporate managers would start taking IT security seriously.
As the most recent security breach shows, Sony’s managers certainly weren’t taking their information security seriously as alleged North Korean hackers gleefully disabled systems and downloaded confidential documents.
While Sony’s woes are deeply damaging to the company, not least for the executives caught out gossiping about movie stars, the stakes are far higher for other companies.
In Turkey its alleged a 2008 oil pipeline explosion was caused by Russian hackers while in the US, Palestinian sympathisers are accused of causing massive damage to the IT systems of the Sands Casino group.
Sony may be one of the most digitally incompetent business in history – at least in respect to IT security – but it’s important for every business to making sure their information systems and critical business systems are hardened against attacks.