Ex-Employees Sue Sony Pictures, Claiming Company Failed To Protect Workers’ Personal Info From Hack

In the wake of the major hack over at Sony Pictures Entertainment earlier this month, two former employees are suing the company, claiming that Sony Pictures didn’t do enough to protect their personal information from hackers.

The ex-workers — one left in 2007 and the other hasn’t worked for Sony since 2002 — claim in a federal lawsuit that it’s Sony Pictures’ fault that employees’ social security numbers, salary details and other personal info was reportedly stolen, according to the Associated Press, citing a figure of nearly 50,000 affected past and current workers.

The lawsuit claims that Sony Pictures dropped the ball in securing its computer systems despite “weaknesses that it has known about for years,” but that the company decided to take on that risk as a business decision.

The plaintiffs point to past hack attacks against Sony Pictures and Sony in general, including one from 2011 that exposed millions of user accounts in Sony’s PlayStation network.

Those incidents should’ve been enough to prepare the company, making the latest breaches “surprising and egregious,” the lawsuit claims.

The former workers allege that there are emails and other information published by the hackers showing that Sony’s IT department and its head legal person knew the security system was vulnerable to an attack, but no one did anything about it.

The workers want compensation for money they’ve spent on credit monitoring since the hack as well as other costs and damages, while the lawsuit also seeks class-action status.

Ex-employees sue Sony Pictures over hacked personal details [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist