On the human side, it is not surprising that such a sequence of events would have such a profound effect on the surviving computer personnel. For example, the false chronology of events reported by Regan and Reagan during their testimony to Congress was discovered only when someone made available the NSA's massive computer archive. Apparently every file, mail message, etc., ever created on the NSA's computers is archived there at time of deletion. Messages in this archive showed how North, Casey, and Poindexter had concocted the false story. Just recently, Oliver North's secretary turned over floppies to the Tower commission which contained undeleted copies of the memos that North et al. carefully shredded before the investigators arrived.
Customers rely on the computer for accounting and inventory control applications.
I should first say that people at the company at which this security review took place were of the general impression that their system, and in particular directories containing their proprietary programs and sensitive customer data, were quite secure. This turned out to have been a mistaken assumption. Although it is unlikely that a breakin actually occurred, part of the problem with one of the security defects was that such a breakin would be untraceable. If the directory file of that account is shared one is granted access to the account as a whole. One can gain access to an account which is not shared through the use an alias command which will require a password.