According to a news report in Reuters, citing the results of the survey, the U.N. also found that some of the world’s poorer countries are showing their richer counterparts how security should be approached when safeguarding computing systems.
“There is still an evident gap between countries in terms of awareness, understanding, knowledge and finally capacity to deploy the proper strategies, capabilities and programmes,” the survey said, reported Reuters.
The survey results did show the U.S. came in second place in the ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Index, but a lot of the other highly ranked countries were small ones or those that have developing countries.
Rounding out the top ten were Malaysia, Oman, Estonia, Mauritius, Australia, Georgia, France and Canada. Russia ranked 11th. India was 25th, one place ahead of Germany, and China was 34th, noted Reuters. The United Nations ranked the countries based on legal, technical and organizational institutions in the country, the educational and research capabilities of their citizens and the cooperation in information-sharing networks.
“Cybersecurity is an ecosystem where laws, organizations, skills, cooperation and technical implementation need to be in harmony to be most effective,” the survey said, according to Reuters. “The degree of interconnectivity of networks implies that anything and everything can be exposed, and everything from national critical infrastructure to our basic human rights can be compromised.”
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The report noted that one of the most important first steps to safeguard computer networks is to embrace a national security strategy against cyberattacks, but the survey found that 50 percent of the countries around the globe don’t even have that. The worst performing country from a security perspective was Equatorial Guinea, which Reuters noted scored zero.
