The reality is that unless and until the PR hit from failures like this impact their stock price or their bottom line, companies won't care to fix the processes that created them.

> make sure partners understood this

Since when they were partners to Micro$lop? First, it's thug like behavior taking the ability to run code on our own computers without their approval. Second it's even more evil justifying this behaviour by calling the developers "partners".

It could be dead simple. Lock the account, but let the owner temporarily unlock it for X days so they have enough time to undergo verification.