Sony CEO: Hack was Perpetrated by a Nation State

Sony (NYSE:SNE) will pay $8 million to employees to settle a class action lawsuit over ‘The Interview’ hack in 2014. During an interview with the FOX Business Network’s Deirdre Bolton Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai discussed who may have caused the attack that left personal information of employees vulnerable.

“I think that based on all the reports that we’ve gotten from the FBI and other authorities that this was not something that was perpetrated by a disgruntled employee that in fact it was an attack from a nation state. That’s the information that we’ve gotten,” he said.

Hirai discussed how the company will deal with these incidents going forward.

“Incidents like these are issues unfortunately that is a part of life, part of business going forward. And whether it’s Sony, whether it’s anybody else, it’s not a question of if, but it’s more of a question of when. So rather than say this is not going to happen again, it’s more making sure that if, unfortunately, these incidents happen that we are able to deal with it in a proactive and a very quick manner.”

Hirai also discussed the state of business and his outlook for growth.

“We are not selling off our TV business or smartphone business. The TV business is now a fully owned subsidiary. The smartphone business has always been a fully owned subsidiary. We were able to turn the TV business around to profitability last fiscal year. We are well on our way to doing a restructuring to turn the business for the smartphone business to profitability this fiscal year and next fiscal year and beyond… The growth areas for Sony really are going to be driven by our image sensor business… entertainment businesses and our video game business.”