After a 3-week outage, Sony has finally started restoring PlayStation online services in phases, and will continue their efforts worldwide until the systems are fully operational. It could take until the end of the month to fully restore PSN, PlayStation Store, Qriocity and other services to all its customers, but all U.S. states and other regions of the world should be seeing partial restoration as the result of phase one. Sony has been updating a set of map graphics which show the areas where service is live, along with web updates, and the United States is now in the green zone. As announced prior to restoration, all users will be required to download a firmware update and to change their passwords in order to connect to the servers. This comes as the first step in ensuring data security and protecting user information.
Sony wants to apologize for the incident and would like to thank its customers for their patience and support. In a recent video announcement, Sony Computer Entertainment president and group CEO Kazuo Hirai details how the company is restoring the services and what steps the company has taken to prevent future attacks. He also explains that even though the process of bringing the systems back online was long and tiresome, that it was absolutely necessary to implement the new and improved security measures to protect user data. Customers are encouraged to log in to their accounts and change their passwords as soon as possible and to get back to using the gaming and media services. Hirai explains that, while there is no guaranteed prevention of cyber attacks other than heavy monitoring, the network and its systems are significantly more secure—and that the company hopes to regain the trust of even its most loyal customers.
SCE and subsidiaries will continue to update the status of the systems. In the mean time, change those passwords and enjoy the restored online functionality of your Sony products!