NEW YORK — Two former employees of Sony Pictures Entertainment are suing the company for not preventing hackers from stealing nearly 50,000 social security numbers, salary details and other personal information from current and former workers.
The lawsuit claims that Sony Pictures failed to secure its computer systems despite “weaknesses that it has known about for years,” but that the company made a business decision to accept the risk. It states that the latest data breaches are especially “surprising and egregious” because Sony Pictures has been repeatedly attacked over the years, including a 2011 hack that revealed millions of user accounts on Sony’s PlayStation video-game network.
The case filed in a federal court in Los Angeles on Monday seeks class-action status for other current and former employees whose personal information was stolen posted online.
Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.
The case has two named plaintiffs: Michael Corona, a former Sony Entertainment employee who left the company in 2007 and now lives in Virginia, and Christina Mathis, who left the company in 2002 and lives in California. They allege their Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information have been leaked, exposing them to identify theft for years to come.
Their lawyers allege that emails and other information leaked by the hackers show that Sony’s information-technology department and its top lawyer believed its security system was vulnerable to attack, but that company did not act on those warnings. Corona and Mathis do not spell out how much they are seeking the case, but want actual damages and an order requiring Sony to pay for services to monitor credit and banking services and repair damage from identify theft for at least five years.
Sony has offered employees one year of credit monitoring, the lawsuit states. The plaintiffs claim that protection is inadequate because it can take years for thieves to exploit the personal information included in the data breach.
Corona so far has spent $700 on identity theft protection for him and his family, and Mathis has spent $300, according to the suit.
Highly sensitive material from the entertainment unit of Tokyo-based Sony Corp. has been leaked almost daily since hackers broke into its computer networks last month. New threats and data leaks from the shadowy group calling itself Guardians of Peace, or GOP, were issued Tuesday.
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