In a extreme safety-first organisation — and the GB railway is exactly that — it's easy to exploit that weakness.
It actually had very minimal impact. An hour or two wasn't bad for an organisation which stripped staff to a bare minimum, and for the area.
And it's very much the customer's job to work for the railway these days: it's our job to report police matters we are told incessantly with announcements. It's our job to buy the right ticket as there are very few ticket staff and staff with any knowledge these days. It's our job to use third party websites during disruption and to Tweet the railway company for assistance because again there is not enough staff.
So Network Rail is not going to come out and say "it's absolutely our job to be aware of all our infrastructure at all times and our defence to this new threat is to bolster staff and CCTV and reduce our reliance on third party reports"