Cyber security in the games industry

Hacking is gaining unauthorized access to software and hardware.

Cyber security is the body of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access. In a computing context, security includes both cyber security and physical security.



The most recent instant of hacking within the games industry came from Christmas of 2017. As the Nintendo Switch was being hugely sought out as one of the biggest gifts that year pirates managed to gain the same level of access as  Nvidia engineers  giving them functions not available to the public. After this it has made updating the software very risky with people being recommended to play offline to avoid updates as well as buying physical copies of the games they want. As of yet a resolution has not been found to get the pirates off of the same access as they have.

Another case study of hacking within the games industry is the infamous 2011 PlayStation Network outage. In this the account information of 77 million people were compromised and forced Sony to disable the online network for 23 days. It took from April to May the 14th of that year for them to release a firmware update that required users to enter a new password. As a way to stop outrage credit was given to the community. PlayStation's  response to stop future events like this happening they changed their terms of service. Afterwards Sony's security did not test the time as they were hacked later on in 2014.