The original wave of hacktivism in defense of Wikileaks plagued sites like Amazon, Visa, and PayPal that dared to try and cut off Wikileaks funding or access to the Internet. The attacks against Sony seem to be linked with a hacktivist cause to avenge the Sony lawsuit against George Hotz--the PS3 hacker. Sony settled the lawsuit, but attackers have still stalked and plagued Sony and all of its various online services for the past month.

Companies can't make business decisions based on avoiding pissing off the hacktivists of the world. For one thing, pleasing one group will just piss off another--you can't make everyone happy. But, organizations need to do a and protecting data.

WikiLeaks was able to stay online, relatively unaffected by attempts to shut it down. Perhaps Wikileaks could consult for these other organizations to help them that can withstand hacktivist attacks.