While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States — its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America. The unit was also among those that attacked the computer security firm RSA, whose computer codes protect confidential corporate and government databases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied...

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Bottom-line, the "costs" of hacking may far exceed the productivity gains in information processing to be had utilizing electronic databases, and control systems that are connected to the internet.

Economically-speaking, transforming American systems -- and those of competitors around the world -- back towards a defensible, strategic model should flip productivity gains on their head; it adds back older, higher transaction costs.

(Not only might private and public institutions find themselves needing more isolated and protected databases, but the American system of higher education may have to consider its own strategic response. Probably, the "bottom-line" view is that said authorities were temporarily deluded about security; or believed, falsely, that disintegration of the old U.S.S.R. meant technology security could afford to relax.)

Insiders, of course, will argue for unfathomable amounts of tax dollars to be used to strengthen and protect the systems from hacking; there is NO amount of money ... might as well early on "smell the coffee ..."

Of course, this does not mean our "electronic revolution" is a complete flop; it simply means most U.S. citizens have confirmed what those little voices in their heads already knew: Personal or public data held in electronic databases cannot be protected. It's the equivalent of discovering, for instance, that "online banking" is fatally flawed and unsustainable!

No to digital "medical" records; no internet accessible public information data bases or private or gov't control systems; place data in insulated cells;