Finland is the world’s most cyber secure country, according to a new report.
The Cybersecurity Exposure Index (CEI) by PasswordManagers.co tapped data sets from Microsoft and the International Telecommunication Union to list the countries most and least exposed to cyber crime.
The top five most secure: Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Australia, Estonia. The least secure/most exposed: Aghanistan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Palestine, Venezuela. Exposure was measured through data showing encounters with malware, and broader “level of committment to cybersecurity”.
While only one country on the continent made the bottom five, cybersecurity in Africa more broadly was found to be particularly poor, with 75 percent of its countries classified in the high or very high exposure groups.
Security awareness platform Knowbe4 Africa earlier released a study into African awareness of cyber security and found that 50 percent of respondents had suffered a malware infection and that 64 percent did not know what ransomware is, emphasising some deep-rooted challenges.
Such lack of awareness is not by any stretch of the imagination confined to the African continent: A May 2020 report by data security provider, Reading-based Clearswift, found that of British 1,000 public sector staff, nearly half had never even heard of ransomware.
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The founder of PasswordManagers.co Josh Frisby said: “Cyber security is imperative to secure digital infrastructures, devices and identities and while some countries may be more exposed than others, the commitment to protect against cyber crime should dominate the priorities of every organisation and individual.
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“Depending on where you reside, you may be more or less exposed to cyber crime but, by taking the appropriate steps, such as using a password manager to securely store your credentials, browsing the web via a VPN when using unsecured public WiFi and employing security software, you substantially increase your protection against cyber attacks”.
