Internet could be set for 24 hour shutdown in 2017, security expert says

This year has seen a significant increase in high-profile cyber-security incidents, but one expert believes that next year may well see the level of threat increased.

Yahoo and the Democratic National Congress were two of the major entities affected by the increase in cyber crime at the business and political levels.

The internet giant had over 500 million users' account details hacked earlier this year, while Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was affected by the leaking of thousands of emails from senior figures in her party, including her campaign chairman John Podesta.

According to LogRhythm's vice president James Carder, this threat will probably increase in 2017 without proper measures being taken to tackle it, having an adverse affect on markets.

"In 2017, we're going to see it hit big sometime, somewhere. If the internet goes down, financial markets will tank," Carder told Business Insider.

He added that the DynDNS attack earlier this year which shut down several popular sites was a precursor for a bigger hack.

"If you can prove that you can take down massive sites and a large chunk of the US internet for a few hours, a 24-hour outage seems pretty easy to do?"

Another phenomenon which emerged in 2016 was the idea of fake news, and how the spread of falsified news articles through social media can impact the way the population acts.

"The power of influence is starting to shift away from main stream news outlets... They will respond to the fake news threat by trying to implement some level of media control that will likely take it a little too far."