Sony, as a company, knows well the price of such a breach. In 2011, the company had costs above $170 million following the breach of the PlayStation Network that exposed data on over 100 million people.
While the latest attack did not expose customer data, over 50,000 employees and former employees have had their social security numbers and other data leaked. The company also had a few of its films leaked to the Web months before they hit theaters, which could lead to "an impairment charge of $83 million" for lost ticket sales and more.
In addition, there will be a major cost to investigate the hack, repair all damaged servers and PCs, and upgrade systems to avoid future attacks. For a few days, productivity at the studio even stopped completely as employees had to use pen and paper since their computers were unusable.
Sony has not estimated their costs, yet, as it assesses the full impact of the breach. The company did have insurance, by cybersecurity insurance will likely only cover a small portion, especially if it finds that Sony was negligent.
Source:
Reuters
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 9 Dec 2014 21:58
