Typical executive mindset
Most big companies I've worked for are run by marketing boneheads who rose up in the ranks and became executives. Marketing boneheads, usually having been the jocks and frat boys in school, know next to nothing about computers.
They care about one thing: Money. To them, IT is just an expense-center filled with a bunch of nerds who only want to spend the company's money on new toys they don't need. We were merely an annoyance to them and any protections we try to put in place that make the company loads safer, but their routine a tiny bit more involved are shut down.
Basically hearing about how the executives treated the IT Security staff comes as absolutely NO surprise to me. And being told the customer database is off-limits is also not surprising. Marketing goons are too stupid to realize that in order to protect your data, you have to allow access to it to trusted people who need access.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
