Governments across the world need to become more proactively responsive to mitigate the risk of new and evolving cyber threats, according to the United Nations (UN)-backed Global cybersecurity index 2024 report.
The report is the work of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is a digital technologies-focused UN agency intended to shine a light on the progress countries around the world are making when it comes to evading cyber threats.
It does this by assessing their efforts across five pillars, spanning legal, technical, organisational, capacity, development and cooperation. The last time the report was published was in 2021.
For the first time, the report also uses a tiering system to rank countries based on how prepared they are to defend themselves from cyber threats, with 46 countries achieving the highest Tier 1 ranking, which marks them out as showing a strong commitment to addressing all five pillars.
“Most countries are either ‘establishing’ (Tier 3) or ‘evolving’ (Tier 4) in terms of cyber security,” said the ITU in a statement. “The 105 countries in these tiers have largely expanded digital services and connectivity but still need to integrate cyber security measures.”
Overall, the report said countries all around the world are stepping up their investments and efforts on the cyber security front.
For example, the report confirmed that 132 countries now have a national cyber security strategy in place, which is up from 107 in 2021.
More needs to be done
However, given how many countries have a Tier 3 or Tier 4 ranking, it’s clear more needs to be done, said the ITU.
“Building trust in the digital world is paramount,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, ITU secretary general. “The progress seen in the Global cybersecurity index is a sign that we must continue to focus efforts to ensure that everyone, everywhere can safely and securely manage cyber threats in today’s increasingly complex digital landscape.”
The cyber security threats organisations and countries are having to face down continue to evolve and grow in sophistication, with the report flagging government-targeted ransomware attacks, system outages and cyber breaches affecting core industries as particularly worrisome.
“The Global cybersecurity index 2024 shows significant improvements by countries that are implementing essential legal measures, plans, capacity building initiatives and cooperation frameworks, especially in strengthening incident response capabilities,” said Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau.
“ITU’s cyber security projects and programmes are supporting those national efforts to more effectively manage cyber threats, and I hope that the progress demonstrated by this latest index encourages countries to do more in developing secure and trustworthy digital systems and networks.”
From a geographical perspective, the report flags Africa as being a region of the world where the biggest improvement in mitigating cyber attacks has occurred since the last report was published in 2021.
“The world’s least developed countries [LDCs] have also started making gains, though they still need support to advance further and faster,” said the ITU statement.
“[The report also] shows that the average LDC has now reached the same level of cyber security status that many of the non-LDC developing countries had in 2021.
“Land-locked developing countries and small island developing states continue to face resource and capacity constraints on cyber security efforts,” it added.