Sony began restoring its PlayStation Network service in the United States and Europe on Sunday after shutting down the service almost a month ago due to a massive security breach affecting over 100 million online accounts.
Restored operations are mainly limited to online gaming, chat and music streaming services. Sony said it aimed to fully restore the PlayStation Network by the end of May.
Sony also began Sunday a phased restoration of its Qriocity movie and music services which share the PlayStation Network's server, said Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka.
The first phase of the restoration of services for North America and Europe will include sign-in for PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, including the resetting of passwords, the restoration of online gameplay across PlayStation 3 and PSP, playback rental video content if within rental period of PlayStation Store Video Store on PS3, PSP and Media Go, the restoration of Q Music Unlimited, for current subscribers, on PS3 and PC, access to third party services such as VidZone and MUBI, restoration of the 'Friends' category on PS3, including Friends List, Chat Functionality, Trophy Comparison and the restoration of PlayStation Home.
Sony has warned that the restoration of services on a global scale may take some time and said on Saturday that it would take hours to restore the PlayStation Network across the US.
The company has been working with outside contractors to ensure Sony PlayStation Network, Qriocity and Sony Online Entertainment are far more secure then before the hack that saw millions if users data stolen.
Network security breaches are part of a trend that saw the costs of such invasions jump 48 percent, to an average of $318 per compromised record last year, according to a March report by the Ponemon Institute.
Malicious attacks in the U.S. are on the rise. They climbed 7 percentage points in 2010, with data breaches costing U.S. businesses an average of $7.2 million per incident, according to the Ponemon Institute report. The study found that about 85 percent of all U.S. companies have experienced one or more attacks.
The use of a hijacked or rented server to launch attacks is typical for sophisticated hackers. The proliferation of server farms around the globe has made such misdirection easier, said E.J. Hilbert, president of the security company Online Intelligence and a former FBI cyber-crime investigator.
