If a product offered to customers contains software with security vulnerabilities, it increases the risk of unexpected viruses or other third-party software being introduced, which may result in unintended product behavior, and/or unwanted distribution or loss of data.

Sony is doing everything possible to prevent security vulnerabilities from occurring in our software products, and to that end we have established regulations for software development known as "Software Anti-Vulnerability Coding Rules STM-0117." To increase the effectiveness of STM-0117, new rules concerning the upstream design process have been added and have renamed the document as "Standard for Product Security Assurance." Sony is also expanding our anti-vulnerability activities by applying the STM-0117 rules to consignment work done by third party software suppliers.

STM-0117 is revised and updated whenever new types of virus software, penetration methods, or unexpected security exploits are discovered, but it is not guaranteed to protect against all forms of software vulnerabilities.