One of the world's leading online gambling websites, Betfair, admitted last week that the personal account details of more than 3 million of its players was hacked in early 2010. Today, Betfair's Director of Security, Sean Catlett, resigned.

Catlett's resignation is the first casualty in what will likely be a lengthy internal reorganization.

Catlett came to Betfair in October 2009, roughly five months prior to the hacking scandal, from a strong IT security background. He was Global Head of Threat and Vulnerability Management at respected international banking firm, Barclays. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President at Bank of America, where he managed a team of network security experts.

Betfair reps were quick to spin the story, insisting that Catlett had not resigned, but instead "chosen to return to the US to pursue an opportunity with a start-up company."

The timing, however, of Catlett's departure is too curious to be coincidental. Finger pointing is the first thing to follow incidents of this type, and big companies like Betfair no doubt recognize the urgency in selecting a fall guy.

The security breach occurred between March 28, 2010 and April 9, 2010. Approximately 3 million account usernames with encrypted security questions were stolen. Nearly all of those included addresses and nearly 90,000 included bank details.  

The theft was not detected until a server malfunction was discovered a month later. It was only when maintenance was required that Betfair learned at least nine of its UK servers had been compromised.

The hackers were based in Cambodia.

Betfair has rushed to reassure anxious customers that all data was recovered without damage and appropriate measures have been taken to ensure stolen details cannot be used.

Whether this is true or not, as well as who will be next on the chopping block, remains to be seen.