I asked readers in “The Unhackable Internet” to consider what they would do if they woke one morning to find their money gone. Last week that question became frighteningly real.

Twenty thousand customers logged on to find that money in accounts at Bank of America had disappeared.

One account holder, staring at $0 account balances, described it as a “heart-stopping” moment. Was her money really gone? She said that she received little to no communication about this “glitch” as the day progressed until Bank of America said that “some clients were experiencing an issue.” The problem was not resolved until that evening.

Events like this are the canaries in the cyber coal mine. After national defense, the U.S. banking system is among the most secure critical infrastructures in the country. It has exemplary regulatory and industry standards, conducts regular tabletop exercises and has built redundancies into systems in anticipation of a catastrophic cyber event.

But all of those defenses and precautions must operate in an insecure virtual environment that includes none of the usual protections that........

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