The reason these articles focus on the faculty is because students will only be in a particular class once in their whole lives (everything going according to plan), whereas the professor teaching that class will do so many times. This is why articles like this put the blame on the faculty: it's pointless trying to reform student behaviour because the next batch of students in 6 months' time won't have learnt anything at all from any punishments you dished out to the last group.

> it was hard to identify the cheaters, and the usual penalties couldn't be enforced.

This might be a common problem. My university had similar draconian penalties for cheating, but the seriousness of the penalty requires an appropriately-serious proof of culpability, and it's surprisingly hard to get one.