Sony vs. Valve: The Scale of a Breach

[M.U.G.E.N]

thismeintiel said:

zarx said:
The difference is that Valve have let everyone know and told them to change their passwords as soon as possible and to watch their credit card statements. They have also confirmed exactly what information was exposed and how it was protected (hashed passwords and credit card info encrypted with the best encryption in the business) and not shut down their entire service for weeks.

By being transparent and up front about the situation they have mitigated the wild speculation that surrounded the PSN hack. The fact that this has happened before also help lessen the impact.

Not true, at all.  initially they thought it was restricted to the forums and also thought it was a minor hack, so they did no mandatory changing of paswords, like Sony did when PSN was finally up.  I'm sure most felt safe enough to keep passwords the same since Valve didn't come off as too worried.

@ OP

The major difference here is the "console warz."  Had Steam been a console, and was competing against the 360 and the PS3, it would have blown up even more.  You would have had fanboys of both consoles ripping into them.  Plus, you would have the PC fanboys (many of whom are defending Valve now because it is PC gaming) adding to it.  Of course, it didn't help that even gaming journalists can be fanboys, like the one who wrote this article.  "In other words, it pretty much made the PlayStation more of a pile of scrap than it already was."  Come on, really?  Seems like something that would have been "okay" in 2006/2007, but not now.  Besides, I'm sure 55 million people would disagree with you.

Personally, I think Sony did the better thing.  Yes, they waited longer than Valve to tell users what was going on, but they also took down the service until they knew EXACTLY how big this was and found ways to make the service more secure.  Valve, on the other hand, told people sooner, but went ahead without knowing the full extent of what happened, so didn't force password changes or change the security, at all.  Now that they have investigated further, they see it was worse than they thought previously, and by not forcing certain security measures, may have made the situation worse.  Something tells me they may not know the full extent of this even now.  And as of now, I think the service is still up.

and if i'm not mistaken they took 4 days to announce the breach as well...