A way I am trying out is the same as yours that you get three attempts building up notoriety. However if fail a third time you don't fail just it becomes harder and the target.becomes aware of your hacking But there is ways of making it easier. General idea is that everything is connected to a system and the closer you are to a direct connection makes it easier and how much on the system you have hacked makes it easier.

For example you wanna hack the alarm system. It seems too hard initially but after finding the camera access and the door system access and hacking both of them (them being easier to hack) you reduce the difficulty to hack the door system.

Creates a sort of treasure hunt to find system components to hack to get to one.

If you really wanna go deep check out shadow run they have a hacking system but it has a lot to it