It's the good old "knee-jerk, after the fact, heads-roll solution" to a crisis.

AOL LLC's chief technology officer Maureen Govern abruptly resigned last week in the aftermath of a disclosure that the company released data on 650,000 online subscribers. AOL fired two workers in its research division, which was responsible for the release of the data.

Earlier this month two IT managers from Ohio University were sacked for failing to prevent a series of breaches. Another university CIO William Sams chose to resign after a breach.

The departure of these IT professionals follow a similar series of incidents earlier in the year when a number of US government agencies suffered security breaches that led to a flurry of resignations, restructures and hasty departures.

It's becoming par for the course. But little has changed. Another batch of breaches landed on my desk this week involving laptops stolen from vehicles or data misplaced by subcontractors.