The cyberattack on Sony Entertainment had an impact on everything, right from the distribution of a movie to the revelation of executive level emails which were a lot more of teenage blah blah. The attack also affected Sony’s ability to manage payroll.
The attack targeted Sony’s servers and computer hard drives by stealing and erasing the data. It left company’s operations paralyzed right from email to internal phone systems, which directly affected around 6,000 people.
Rising from the ashes, the Sony team gathered all the available resources and creativity. The company’s payroll department discovered and started using an old machine, which in olden days was used to print paychecks manually. The employees kept the communication and operations alive through their personal email accounts and cell phones. And then, the IT department found a treasure, which was nothing but a stash of old BlackBerry phones.
Putting the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) architecture to use, Sony was able to re-establish its email, which now is safe from the further attacks by the hackers as the BIS and BES use stand-alone infrastructure.
You must be thinking that if used earlier, the BES would have saved Sony from the hack in the first place? The answer is No, because the attack carried a universal and brutal approach, which could have targeted any infrastructure. Moreover, the security of Sony has been compromised blatantly in the recent years, so even BlackBerry couldn’t have saved the day for Sony. However, BlackBerry did help Sony to stand once again and that itself is an achievement.
