I think you got distracted from the point by all the likes. Granted, they make it easy to get distracted. The thrust of the article seems to be that it was the

I think you got distracted from the point by all the likes. Granted, they make it easy to get distracted. The thrust of the article seems to be that it was the people in charge of these myriad wire systems who were disregarding the security risks, demonstrably to their detriment. As he states: "But I feel like part of it has to be that the people in charge of those databases, like me until today, had a disenchanted view of the financial world. These systems didn't hold the nuclear launch codes. They held press releases -- documents that, by definition, would be released publicly within a few days at most. Speed, convenience and reliability were what mattered, not top-notch security." ... which is essentially the refrain for every major, embarassing security breach: speed, convenience, and reliability trump security concerns. We have year after year of examples of innocuous systems being compromised to form elaborate weapons (at a seemingly increasing rate year-over-year), but security is still not a maximum priority. And the reasons are as Levine notes: speed, convenience, and reliability over security.