Disagree on absurdity. I'm certain that if you focused enough eyes on any company with as much surface area exposed to the internet you'd poke just as many holes.
I'm not sure that is true for any company with as much surface area. I would be extremely disappointed if it were true of any of Canada's five major banks, for example. Google has been under continuous hacking attack from China and so far they haven't had to 'fess up to storing passwords in plaintext.
I also agree that a big surface area (such as units with independent web strategies all over the world) increases the likelihood of there being some breach of security. What I find embarrassing here is that we aren't talking about one of the Sony properties having a breach, it's lots and lots of them.
I suggest that this is symptomatic of a problem with Sony itself, not just the surface area they present. What I'd expect from a well-managed company with a big surface area is yes, some property might have a breach, but that would be the exception. It's beginning to look like Sony's lax security with respect to customer information is the rule and not the exception.
JM2C, I am not claiming I know this for a fact.
I do see your point about Sony, and they may in fact be an outlier here. I think I've been accustomed to the story of customer information breaches from large corporations though, and so maybe I'm overly pessimistic?
My business account also has a different two layer, one password, one authentication device.
I have to disagree. Lots of big companies are not great at security, but this is just horrible!
But would you find most storing passwords in plain text? in 2011?
I remain pessimistic.