By Winda Benedetti

Sony wants the world to know that it won't be kicked around by hackers so easily again.

With hackers taking down the PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment earlier this year and making off with personal information belonging to millions of gamers, Sony on Tuesday announced that it has hired a former Department of Homeland Security official (and a former Microsoft employee) to get their cyber security situation in hand.

Sony has named Philip Reitinger, former director of the U.S. National Cyber Security Center, the company's senior vice president and chief information security officer, starting today.

According to a Sony press release, Reitinger's resume looks something like this:

Reitinger has worked in and with the information security community for many years, and has held key cyber security positions in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft Corporation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Justice. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degree, and from Yale Law School.

Reitinger was, in fact, the Chief Trustworthy Infrastructure Strategist at Microsoft. (For a more detailed bio, check out this link.)

Reitinger is now top information security executive at Sony, which means he will oversee information security, privacy and internet safety across the company.

"Certainly the network issue was a catalyst for the appointment," a Sony spokesman told Reuters news service. "We are looking to bolster our network security even further."

(Reuters contributed to this report.)

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Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things here on Twitter or join her in the stream here on Google+.And be sure to check out the In-Game Facebook page here.

Winda Benedetti