Algeria Ranked ‘Least Cyber-Secure’ Country in the World, Japan ‘Most Cyber-Secure’
A new study from Comparitech has named Algeria the ‘least cyber-secure’ nation in the world, whilst Japan has been ranked the ‘most cyber-secure.’
The information, tools and comparisons provider studied 60 countries to gauge their ability to meet seven key criteria:
- The percentage of mobiles infected with malware
- The percentage of computers infected with malware
- The number of financial malware attacks
- The percentage of telnet attacks (by originating country)
- The percentage of attacks by crypto-miners
- The best-prepared countries for cyber-attacks
- The countries with the most up-to-date legislation
In a blog post on its website, Comparitech explained that, for each criterion, countries were given a point based on where they ranked between the highest-ranking and lowest-ranking countries. Countries with the least cyber-secure scores were given 100 points, while countries with the most cyber-secure scores were allocated zero points. All of the countries in between these two scores received a score on a percentile basis, depending on where they ranked.
Comparitech was quick to point out that it found huge variances in a number of the categories and that there was no country that came ‘top of the class’ across the board. However, “there were some countries that lacked significantly in a variety of areas and others who outperformed the majority of countries,” the company said.
“So with that in mind, we’ve created rankings for these 60 countries, from the least cyber-safe to the most cyber-safe,” Comparitech added.
Algeria was deemed the least overall cyber-secure country, being the highest-ranking nation for lack of legislation and computer malware rates, and also receiving a high score in the categories for mobile malware and preparation for cyber-attacks
Algeria was followed by Indonesia and Vietnam as the second and third least cyber-secure nations, with Tanzania and Uzbekistan ranked fourth and fifth least cyber-secure, respectively.
Conversely, countries that performed well overall in Comparitech’s research were Japan (which was ranked the most cyber-secure country in the world, scoring “incredibly low” across the majority of categories), France, Canada, Denmark and the United States. The United Kingdom was ranked the eighth most cyber-secure nation.
Speaking to Infosecurity, Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate at Comparitech, said the report findings are evidence that, generally, developed countries have better cybersecurity than developing ones.
“The reason might be because people in developing countries are less experienced with the internet and the devices they use to access it. They have less awareness of cybersecurity threats, while ISPs and online companies are not as well prepared for cyber-attacks as their counterparts in developed nations. As internet adoption ramps up, security lags behind. A New York Times report states that hackers use developing countries as test beds for new malware.”
However, there were a few surprising results to come out of the research, he added. “I was surprised to see that Germany suffered the highest number of financial malware attacks, which bucks the trend of developed nations being more cyber-secure than undeveloped ones – 3% of users in Germany were targeted by financial malware.”
This post Algeria Ranked ‘Least Cyber-Secure’ Country in the World, Japan ‘Most Cyber-Secure’ originally appeared on InfoSecurity Magazine.
