Ignorance isn't bliss

My late father always used to like to tell me that ignorance is no defence in law. Usually he threw this particular pearl of wisdom at me about 10 seconds before I was going to deny any knowledge of some wrong-doing of mine he had discovered. My excuse for those denials was adolescence, an excuse I would imagine most IT managers in the NHS can’t really call upon. Yet ignorance appears to be an increasingly common defence when organisations are faced with the discovery of yet another breach, big or small, and it's starting to annoy me.