During this holiday travel season, which has you more concerned, conventional terror attacks of the kind attempted on Christmas Day or tech terrorism, which aims to take down access to or breach puter networks?

John P. Avlon of the Manhattan Institute makes the case that the latter perhaps represents a greater threat to national and economic security. Avlon concludes, “Whether it is perpetrated by al-Qaida, a hostile nation, or a lone hacker, we cannot afford to wait for a digital Pearl Harbor to take this threat seriously. Delay is denial. Cyber-attacks ing—it’s not a question of if, but when and to what extent.”

Judging from the reaction to recent BlackBerry network outages, the consuming public (if not the policy makers and politicians) appreciate the disruption that cyber terrorism might cause.