These Are the People Hired to Hunt the PlayStation Network Hackers

To catch those responsible for the attacks on the PlayStation Network, which has brought the service down for over a week and exposed the private details of millions, Sony has hired not one but two teams of private investigators. And a third team of consultants, just for good measure.

The first team is from Data Forté, and according to Reuters it’s led by “a former special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service”. The company specialises in the “preservation and collection of electronic evidence”, and has experience with similar cases, having helped prosecute hackers responsible for data theft from a “major motion picture studio”.

The second team is from Guidance Software, a data security firm. While specialising in the training of staff and the selling of corporate data protection software, Guidance has dispatched a number of “cyber-security detectives” from its ranks to help in the investigation.

The third company, Protiviti, is not involved in trying to catch those responsible. Instead, as a company specialising in things like audits, it is providing consultants to help Sony “clean up” the mess left by the attack and the fact the PSN has been down for over a week.

While restoring the functionality of the PSN and ensuring that its customer’s personal details and credit card details are safe is of course Sony’s top priority, it’ll still be nice to see somebody caught at the end of all this. After all, as culpable as Sony was for its online defences, it is (and we all are by extension) still the victims of an invasive crime here.