After a two-week long outage of its PlayStation Network, Sony Corp. (6758) said that it is in the final stages of internal testing of the new system and will restore the popular gaming service "in the coming days".

"[W]e have teams working around the clock and around the world to restore your access to those services as quickly, and as safely, as possible," Sony CEO Howard Stringer said in a statement.

"In the coming days, we will restore service to the networks and welcome you back to the fun."

Sony has been forced to build a new system after a security breach forced it to shut its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services on April 20. Sony has confirmed that personal information from 77 million accounts was obtained in the attack. But Mr. Stringer said that there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused.

"We've been working around the clock to rebuild the network and enhance protections of your personal data," the company said in a blog posting. "It's our top priority to ensure your data is safe when you begin using the services again."

Sony said May 5 its global network and security teams at Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment began the final stages of internal testing of the new system, an important step towards restoring PlayStation Network and Qriocity services

The new system has more firewalls and additional software that should alert system administrators about suspicious activity.

$1 million insurance per user

Sony also said yesterday that it launched a program for U.S. PlayStation Network and Qriocity customers that includes a $1 million identity theft insurance policy per user. It also announced that it will be offering a "Welcome Back" package to customers once its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are up and running. This will include, among other benefits, a month of free PlayStation Plus membership for all PSN customers, as well as an extension of subscriptions for PlayStation Plus and Music Unlimited customers to make up for time lost.

Sony said in a separate announcement on May 5 that it has made arrangements with Debix, Inc., one of the industry's most reputable identity protection firms, to offer AllClear ID Plus at no cost to PlayStation Network and Qriocity account holders for 12 months from the time an account holder registers for the program.Customers will have until June 18 to sign-up and redeem the code.

"Anonymous"

Members of the Sony network detected unauthorized activity in its network system on April 19 and discovered the next day that that data of some kind had been transferred off the Playstation Network servers without authorization. Sony's general counsel provided the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation about the intrusion on April 22.

"When Sony Online Entertainment discovered this past Sunday afternoon that data a from its servers had been stolen, it also discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of those servers named "Anonymous" with the words "We are Legion." Just weeks before, several Sony companies had been the target of a large-scale, coordinated denial of service attack by the group called Anonymous. The attacks were coordinated against Sony as a protest against Sony for exercising its rights in a civil action in the United States District Court in San Francisco against a hacker," Kazuo Hirai, chairman of the board of directors of Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC said in his May 3 letter to the Honorable Mark Bono Mack & Honorable G.K. Butterfield.

The security breach, which Sony branded as "a criminal cyber attack", prompted the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce to hold a hearing Wedenesday in Washington, DC on "The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers." Sony has also been subpoenaed by New York over the data breaches. German privacy officials have also asked for information from the company on the security breach.

12.3 Million Credit Card Users

Sony said that the hackers stole personal information -- including names and e-mail addresses -- from all of the approximately 77 million Playstation Network and Qriocity service accounts. Sony notified consumers on April 26 that their personal information had been taken and that the company "could not rule out the possibility that credit card data had been stolen as well."

Sony stated in its letter to the U.S. Congress that globally, 12.3 million account holders had credit card information on file. In the U.S., approximately 5.6 million had credit card information.