SONY has dropped its appeal to a data breach fine in the U.K. and agreed to pay a £250,000 ($400,000) penalty as punishment for the successful hack of the PlayStation network in 2011.
Earlier this year, the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) cited the company for failing to keep user passwords safe and not adequately updating its software. At the time, ICO Deputy Commissioner and Director of Data Protection David Smith said the company “should have known better.” The hack compromised the names, addresses, email addresses, birthdays and login credentials of millions of users.
“If you are responsible for so many payment card details and log-in details then keeping that personal data secure has to be your priority,” he said in a statement when the fine was issued in January. “In this case that just didn’t happen, and when the database was targeted – albeit in a determined criminal attack – the security measures in place were simply not good enough.”
In its explanation of the decision to pay the fine, the company said it is committed to keeping its users secure.
“After careful consideration, we are withdrawing our appeal,” the company said in a statement. “This decision reflects our commitment to protect the confidentiality of our network security from disclosures in the course of the proceeding. We continue to disagree with the decision on the merits.”
Cybercriminals have increasingly made targeting video game companies a priority. On July 9, Konami revealed that hackers had broken into more than 35,000 accounts and gained access to customer names, mailing addresses and other data. In addition, Nintendo recently revealed that 23,926 Club Nintendo user accounts had been breached, and that there had been more than 15.4 million unauthorized login attempts between June 9 and July 4.