Sony's US chief Howard Stringer has blamed forensic tests for a week-long delay in notifying 77 million customers of the PlayStation Network data breach.
Stringer acknowledged customers were unhappy with the notification process in a letter published online today.
“I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It’s a fair question,” Stronger said.
“I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process.
"Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had — or had not — been taken.”
Sony said it was in the final stages of bringing the disabled PlayStation Network and Qriocity services back online.
By comparison, security company LastPass took less than a day to notify thousands of users of a potential data breach and announce plans to fast-track network security improvements.
