> During this time Makwana had root access to all of the main
  > systems, credentials which the company failed to revoke until
  > the evening of the day of his layoff.

  > His intention was nothing short of replacing the entire financial
  > data, including the backups, from all of the company's production
  > servers, with zeroes.

  > the admin appended malicious code to a legitimate script, leaving
  > a page-worth of blank lines between the two in order to avoid
  > detection.

  > Had this malicious script executed, engineers expect it would
  > have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced if not
  > shutdown operations at Fannie Mae for at least one week.

This quote above, and the entire article boggles the mind. I've worked with big and small organizations that protected root on <10 machines like it was the key to preventing aging.