A new study of 60 countries shows that South Africa falls outside the top half of the worst-ranking nations, but ranks low in legislation. PAUL BISCHOFF reports for Comparitech.
With so much of our personal data stored online, cybersecurity is of the utmost importance.
So just where in the world are you cyber safe, if anywhere?
Last year, our study looked at 60 countries and found huge differences in a number of categories, from malware rates to cybersecurity-related legislation. In fact, not one country was “top of the class” across the board. All of the countries we analyzed needed some significant improvements.
So have things improved or are they getting worse?
We ranked these 60 countries from the least cyber safe to the most cyber safe based on seven criteria:
The percentage of mobile devices infected with malware
The percentage of computers infected with malware
The number of financial malware attacks
The percentage of all telnet attacks by originating country
The percentage of users attacked by cryptominers
The best-prepared countries for cyber attacks
The countries with the most up-to-date cybersecurity legislation
We found most countries’ scores improved since last year. But due to greater cybersecurity efforts from the majority of countries, this means some of the best-performers from last year have dropped down the rankings. This includes the US, which has dropped from the fifth most cyber-secure country to the 17th.
We added 16 new countries to the study thanks to more data becoming available. This means countries are now ranked from one to 76 with one being the least cyber-secure country and 76 being the most cyber-secure country.
Read more on the next page about the least cyber secure countries in the world.
