No, blaming the victim would have been:

> The only reason this happened was because they failed to secure their own systems, it was bound to happen

Instead, parent said:

> IT also failed to put enough checks here

My emphasis on the "also".

Nobody is excusing him but it’s possible for multiple people to make very bad decisions as part of the same problem. In this case, the bank has almost certainly claimed to have security policies in place which would have prevented any of the damages in question. I don’t even work in banking but “how do you deactivate accounts when someone leaves?” is in every single system’s approval process and ongoing audits.

Think of it as if he had stolen money from them after being fired: there’s no question that the culpability would be his but also regulators and insurance would descend on the bank’s management asking why they lacked such basic internal controls for such very well-known risks. Most places will remove all forms of access as soon as the decision is made to fire someone because it’s the most likely time to have anything from theft to, in the US, a workplace shooting.

There are compliance regulations that require this btw.

Sometimes, the victim is *also* to blame.

When shitty policies are part of the root cause, then yes, the victim also shares in creating an environment that allowed easy victimization.

You wouldn't secure your laptop in the front seat of a car in NYC or Chicago. Just as you are not to blame with the vandalization and theft of said equipment, you also could have did easy mitigations to hamper it.

People who shout "victim blaming" are also refusing to take responsibility for reasonable remediations that would have prevented the bad thing.

I mean, if someone dies in a car crash and they weren’t wearing their seat belt, is it victim blaming to say they should have been?

Yeah but if someone purposely drives into that car with the intention of killing the driver, I'd hope they went to prison even if the victim wasn't wearing a seatbelt

In the US, the person who sold the car will go to jail as an accessory to murder .

Many such cases. Sad!

Yes, theoretically we're all guilty of felony murder.

It's totally legitimate to simultaneously hold that the real perpetrator is, er, the perpetrator, and that the victim could have done more to prevent the incident from happening.

Jail the guy, and let his story stand as a warning to implement proper IT and HR practices.