According to the lawsuit, as related by 1Up.com:
”Sony sought to cut its costs at the expense of its customers by terminating a significant number of employees immediately prior to the security breach, including personnel responsible for maintaining the security of the network.
“Just two weeks before the April breach, Sony laid off a substantial percentage of its Sony Online Entertainment workforce, including a number of employees in the Network Operations Center, which, according to Confidential Witness 2, is the group that is responsible for preparing for and responding to security breaches, and who ostensibly has the skills to bring the Network’s security technology up-to-date,” another part of the complaint states. SOE let 205 people go at the end of March and canceled The Agency.
“Sony was more concerned about their development server being hacked rather than some consumer’s data being stolen,” one witness said. “They want to protect themselves and not the people that use their servers.”
This information is intriguing in light of a statement Sony boss Kaz Hirai made earlier in June to the UK Guardian, ”As you probably know, when we made the announcement that we restored the services, we had moved the data centres and we basically have done everything to bring our practices at least in line with industry standards or better.” This seems to indicate that the lawsuit may have a point.