Sony Corporation said it will accelerate the process of moving infrastructure supporting its gaming network that recently came under what the company characterized as a "criminal" cyber-attack to a new data center, Kazuo Hirai, executive deputy president at Sony, said during a press conference.

The new data center is currently under development, but Sony has not disclosed its location. The infrastructure that was attacked is housed in an AT&T data center in San Diego, California.

"First, we are accelerating an already planned move of data center systems currently in San Diego to a new data center in a different location with more advanced system security," Hirai said, speaking through a translator. "Next, we are enhancing our detection capabilities for unauthorized intrusions."

New security measures include new automated software monitoring and configuration management, new encryption levels and additional firewalls.

Personal information of more than 10m users was potentially obtained by intruders. There are about 10m users with active accounts paid for by credit cards in addition to customers that use a number of other payment methods.

User information that was potentially obtained includes name, address, email address, date of birth, gender and log-in details, Hirai said. "While there's no evidence of this time that credit card data  has been taken, we will consider covering the cost of reissue of new credit cards to effective customers if they wish (us) to do so."

In addition to creating new security measures, the company has also created a new position of chief security officer.

The Sony Network Entertainment International division, which oversees network services within Sony, is renting the data center space in San Diego and manages servers it supports.

SNEI engineers shut off servers supporting Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity services on 20 April, immediately after learning that an attack had taken place. Initial investigation revealed that the attackers struck sometime between 17 April and 19 April.

"This was a highly sophisticated attack by a skilled intruder who accessed our system and took steps to cover his tracks," Hirai said.

On 1 May, the company said it had started restoring services in phases, aiming to complete full restoration by the end of the month.

An investigation of the attack by Sony and law-enforcement officials is ongoing.