Re: Computer insecurity ...
far less data was kept online
Of course, but....
You really need to read Clifford Stoll's "Stalking the Wily Hacker", available online, with hacks emanating from East Germany. Those were good times. Uni networks were open to all and sundry and led directly to peripheral databases of military contractors, or to mainframes of research groups with interesting subjects. Kevin Mitnick was making a name etc. And that was even before Gulf War I. It was clear what was coming. Cyberpunk was exploring the subject, for what it's worth. Anyone remember Thierry Breton's "Softwar" thriller about a logic bomb in a Cray sold to the URSS btw?
I still remember "Computers Under Attack: intruders, worms, and viruses", 1990.
A review notes:
"Although prescriptive in how to deal with particular instances of computer insecurity, such as viruses and worms, the book does not make specific recommendations or predictions for the future. The view implied to the reader here is that most types of illicit activities are fairly well understood by the computing community. These are given treatment in some detail in the book. What new twists might be added to the cracker's bag of tricks, or what entirely new types of mischief might yet be invented, are left to the reader's imagination."
Indeed.
After Gulf War I, US security consisted in endless discussion whether it would be appropriate to shove Clipper Chips up everyone's arse so one could eavesdrop at leisure. Appaling. Nowadays we have secret unconstitutional investigations, torture, extrajudicial killings and quite possibly disappearances, but alt least the crypto is hard. But I digress...
It was not so much that US security services hadn't enthused the 'computer' makers to dilute security as that really nobody gave a f*ck, as consumer-level operating systems were hitting the market and network cards were plugged in enthusiastically. People where happy when connection worked at all! Open dialins where everywhere! X.25 was dying. VPNs? Nope. Firewalls were unknown.
Note that the classic "Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker." by Chesvick and Bellovin came out only in 1994.