Physical Damage
There will be an increased volume of targeted attacks with damage as the primary objective.
Perhaps the most famous account of a network attack that resulted in actual damage to computers and other resources was the one at Sony. Here, besides the headline-grabbing news of data and assets ex-filtrated and released to the world, the company reeled from the carnage of attackers securely deleting everything on 3,262 of Sony's 6,797 PCs and 837 of its 1,555 servers. This brought all business operations to a standstill, and the company had to resort to pen and paper, faxing and other "old school" means to try to get things done. Each of those computers and servers that had data wiped also had key start-up software removed or destroyed to render the computers useless without being completely rebuilt. This further ensured that the business would be impaired for weeks or months. The custom malware used also added a threatening screen to each employee computer.
Whether sponsored by a foreign country or a group of malcontents, network attacks with the primary purpose of inflicting damage will likely become more common in the coming year.