Thanks for the inside baseball on this stuff.
It is fascinating.
The scope and tenacity of hackers is not to be underestimated.
Very true. Where there's a will, there's a way has never been more true than with Chinese, Russian, Iranian, etc.. hackers. They are highly skilled, adapt quickly and as much as I hate to say it, typically ALWAYS a half-step ahead of us.
The best Information Security folks can do is prevent hacking BEHAVIOR from penetrating and compromising our networks. This mean understanding hacking PATTERNS and the behavior of each PATTERN. Once you understand the pattern, the behavior/hacking attempt can be stopped. Fortunately, many of today's hacking attempts fall into well documented patterns.
The problem is in the Organization's ability to recognize those patterns and prevent them upfront, or respond to them quickly enough to prevent massive damage.
I'll bet the farm that Sony's network administrators, IT folks, etc.. really didn't have much of a clue on how to secure their network, systems and information assets. That's typically why these things happen in the first place.