No PSN In Japan Until 'Preventative Measures' Provided

Sony has been told that it cannot restart its PlayStation Network services in Japan until it has provided further information regarding the measures it has taken to provide better security for its users. The PlayStation Network has now partially returned to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles worldwide, apart from Japan. A full restoration is planned by the end of May. Kazushige Nobutani, director of Japan's media and content industry department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told Dow Jones Newswires, "We met with Sony on May 6 and 13, and basically we want two things from them." "The first is preventative measures. As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference," he noted. "There were similar cases in the past that were caused by other firms, and we are asking Sony whether their measures are good enough when compared to countermeasures taken in the past," Nobutani said. PSN has been down since April 20, when Sony shut down the service after discovering a cyber attack had exploited a security hole, compromising personal information for about 77 million registered accounts.