Bloomberg: Missed Alarms and 40 Million Stolen Credit Card Numbers: How Target Blew It

According to a detailed report by Bloomberg, December's credit-card heist from Target was detected by their outsourced security firm well in advance of any real damage. Target's security people were alerted and had plenty of time to purge the malware and lock out the hackers, but they sat on their hands and did nothing. They took no action until after the news broke and government investigators got involved.

Lots of people in high places in Target should lose their jobs for this. It's one thing to be the victim of crime. It's quite another to pay big bucks for an outsourced security system and then deliberately ignore them when they tell you there's a massive attack in progress.