Saturday night Phase 1 of Sony‘s long awaited database restoration was set into motion rolling out globally for all users, finally putting an end to the largest PSN outage to date effecting close 100 million PlayStation and Qriocity users.

As we now know the outage was thanks to an “external intrusion” where hackers were able to read users personal account information such as their credit-card numbers, address, postal code, and names. So what exactly is phase 1 of Sony‘s restoration.

Phase 1 of the restoration was a software update forcing users to change their account passwords from the PlayStation 3 system they had originally activated the account on. Along with new security for Sony servers.

The new security system was developed by Sony with the help of their outside security consultants in hopes of never repeating an outage such as this. The new security system will include the following:

• Advanced Technology Security System
• Increased Levels of Encryption
• Added Firewalls
• Earlier warning signals in the chance of another “External Intrusion”

As for those of you greedy guss’ out there the welcome back package was not launched with phase 1 of the restoration – Below are FAQs provided by the Sony PlayStation Blog

 Q: So what exactly is working right now?
A: Sign-in for PlayStation Network and Qriocity (including the resetting of passwords), online gameplay for PS3 and PSP, playback of rental video content on PS3 (if within rental period), Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity on PS3 (for current subscribers), access to services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and MLB.tv, “Friends” category on PS3 (including Friends List, Chat Functionality, Trophy Comparison, etc), in-game leaderboards, and PlayStation Home.

Q: I’m having trouble changing my password/I forgot which email I used on my account/I used a fake email to set up my account.
A: Click here for a set of tips on resetting your password. If you’ve gone through the process and are waiting for an email from us, please note that the very large number of requests has caused certain ISPs to slow the rate at which recipients get emails from us. Please be patient as the systems work through the backlog.

Q: The PlayStation Store hasn’t updated since April 19th. When can I download digital games that were planned to be released since then?
A: To date, three Tuesday publishes were missed, which included items like Under Siege and the MotorStorm Apocalypse demo. Rest assured that you won’t miss any of this great content. To catch up on the large amount of material, we’ll be publishing to the PlayStation Store multiple times per week once commerce functionality is restored.  We will update the PlayStation.Blog with information on timing of the Store restoration, as well as the full list of new content as each publish occurs.

Q: How will PlayStation Plus members be affected by the PSN downtime? A number of games/items were slated to go live or come down on April 26th.
A: We will be picking back up with the PlayStation Plus content calendar where we left off to ensure that you won’t miss out on anything.

Q: Sucker Punch has indicated that they will extend the inFAMOUS 2 beta. Any details?
A: Sucker Punch is evaluating extending the inFAMOUS 2 beta, as well as expanding its scope. Stay tuned for more details here in the coming days.

Q: Is anything special planned for the SOCOM 4 multiplayer community?
A: Zipper will announce details on activities to re-engage fans of SOCOM 4 who have patiently waited to play online.

Q: What about the Call of Duty: Black Ops Double XP weekend that was missed while PSN was down?
A: We have been in discussions with our friends at Treyarch, and they have ensured that all Call of Duty: Black Ops fans will get an extra Double XP event as soon as PSN comes back online. We don’t have details on timing just yet, but look forward to an announcement as soon as we have news.

Q: How can I redeem the Welcome Back offer that was mentioned by Kazuo Hirai? What’s in it?
A: Hang tight – we’ll be announcing all the details soon.

Q: How can I sign up for the Debix AllClear ID Plus protection announced last week?
A: More details are coming soon.

Q: When will the PlayStation.Blog start talking about games again?
A: Tomorrow! Thank you for bearing with us as our role changed over the past few weeks. We’ll be once again talking games every day leading up to E3, which is just a few short weeks away