Sony relied on old BlackBerrys for corporate email during the hack

You may have been able to watch The Interview on Christmas day, but Sony is no doubt still reeling from the hack that saw copies of unreleased films, personal information about employees and salaries, private email exchanges, and more stolen by the Guardians of Peace group earlier at the end of November.

As the dust settles, more information about the hack is slowly coming to light and The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are this week reporting on the ways in which Sony coped with the attack.

The NYT talks about how the company went digitally dark, shutting down voice mail, corporate email and production systems. The payroll department even started cutting physical cheques instead of paying people by direct deposit. The WSJ says the company’s senior execs relied on a phone tree for communicating updates from person to person.

Both news outlets report that the company dug out a stash of old BlackBerrys to facilitate the exchange of information via the aforementioned phone trees. These BlackBerrys were roused from their slumber in the basement of Sony’s historic Thalberg building.

The use of BlackBerrys in corporate environments has dropped over the last couple of years as IT departments come to grips with BYOD and staff bringing iPhones and Androids to work. The fact that Sony could turn to BlackBerry during a time when it didn’t feel its systems were secure enough to remain online is great for BlackBerry. CEO John Chen has spent his first year reiterating the company’s position as a secure option for businesses.