We are not ready for a true data/cyber attack disaster like the BP oil spill

A catastrophic leak at a major data-gathering organization could have an impact as profound as any oil spill

Imagine you're head of a company whose stock in trade is mining one of the world's most valuable resources. You've just struck a rich new cache. The potential for profit is huge. Then, all of a sudden, disaster strikes. Maybe your equipment failed. Maybe your technology had some unforeseen flaw. Maybe it was human error. Whatever the cause, in an instant that promising new profit center has become a liability, and what was once a valuable commodity has become a dangerous contaminant, gushing out of your control at an alarming rate. The collateral damage will be huge, and the effects of the leak will linger for years to come.

But oil isn't the only industry whose execs should be losing sleep. We refer to modern American society as an "information economy," and rightly so. Google has built a fortune harvesting "the world's information," and competitors -- including Facebook, MySpace, and Microsoft -- all seek to do the same. Increasingly there is value in data, and the digital revolution has made it possible to amass vast data sets like no other time in history.
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Yet data, like oil, is dangerous. Even seemingly benign applications of data mining can have broad implications for personal privacy. Should the owners of these new data stores lose control of their assets, in the wrong hands they could have profound impact on the economy and society at large.

More: http://infoworld.com/d/developer-world/are-we-ready-true-data-disaster-213