Sony Settles With Former Employees in Hack Lawsuit

The full spectrum hack nightmare: severe data loss, public humiliation, senior executives pushed out, stars and politicians offended: all followed by lawsuits from former employees whose personal information was compromised. The good news is we're guessing company data passwords are no longer kept in a file labelled 'Passwords.' Hopefully. JL

Nick Statt reports in The Verge:

The lawsuit, which is still pending class-action certification in a hearing set later this month, is a combination of seven different lawsuits brought by former employees whose social security numbers, medical records, and other sensitive personal information were part of the data dump.
Sony Pictures has reached a settlement with former employees in a lawsuit related to the devastating hack it suffered 10 months ago, a breach which saw large amounts of sensitive company information leaked online. The lawsuit, which is still pending class-action certification in a hearing set later this month, is a combination of seven different lawsuits brought by former employees whose social security numbers, medical records, and other sensitive personal information were part of the data dump.
Details of the settlement were not disclosed. Sony and the plaintiffs have asked that the class-action certification be pushed back 45 days while both parties await the approval of the settlement. Deadline first reported news of the settlement .
Sony Pictures' nightmare may come to an end
The hack, one of the most damaging corporate cybercrimes to date, brought a frightening new awareness to how vulnerable corporate data can be to outside attacks. The culprits were initially thought to be related to North Korea, but those assertions, including some from the US government, were disputed by security experts. As a result of the hack, a high-profile corporation was brought to its knees and hackers exposed the inner workings of a secretive industry.
Sony is still dealing with the aftermath of the event, which culminated with studio co-chair Amy Pascal stepping down in February. Sony's legal situation was further complicated when WikiLeaks published around 30,000 documents from the leak in a searchable database back in April of this year, information from which is still surfacing. Using WikiLeaks' tools, The New York Times confirmed that Sony Pictures executives forced changes on an upcoming and controversial film, Concussion, about the brain-damaging effects of football on older players, all in an effort to appease the NFL and avoid potential litigation.