Playstation 4 owners will likely want to keep on the lookout, as Playstation Network maintenance will be happening for around an hour on September 18. According to documents related to the maintenance it will take place between 6:30 and 7:30 (at least in Italy, no idea where else), so unless you’re someone that likes to stay up until the wee hours of the morning or wake up super early, it won’t affect you.
Much like other examples of Playstation Network maintenance, players will be able to access their profile, play games, and use most applications while the maintenance is going on, but you won’t be able to access the Playstation Store, login to your account management, or use Playstation Video while the maintenance is happening.
The Playstation Network maintenance period will be used to finally implement two-step authentication into the Playstation Network, which will help beef up security for Sony’s notoriously full-of-holes online component. The two-step authentication process will involve the use of both the conventional login screen and SMS on player’s phones, so no one can (hopefully) get into your account except for you.
Sony’s had a lot of problems with security over the past few years, the worst one being a hack that caused the personal information of millions of players to be leaked onto the internet. This was bad enough that the American branch of Sony was called into a United States Senate inquiry in order to answer for the disaster.
Two-step authentication is already a process used by a number of other online gaming companies, such as Valve and Microsoft, Playstation’s direct competitor.
Hopefully when the maintenance is done and the authentication process is put in place, nothing like that will happen again; it seems to be working for everyone else, even if the servers can still get DDOS’d and taken down every once in a while.
