…as Honduras, South Korea, Japan lead global pack
Senegal, Nigeria and Egypt are the top three most cyber-secure countries in Africa for businesses to allow their employees to work from, according to a new research by Indusface.
The research by the cloud-based application security company reveals that Senegal, with a cyber-security score of 78.09 out of 100, tops the list of the most secure African countries for businesses to allow employees to remotely work from. Senegal recorded the lowest number of DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks in Africa (9) during 2015 to 2021. (DDOS attack refers to a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.) The country also has the fewest phishing sites per 100,000 urls (80) compared to all other African countries reviewed, making businesses less worried about sensitive information being stolen.
Nigeria comes second with a cyber-security index score of 74.68/100 and the lowest number of compromised computers per 100,000 internet users (62) among all African countries reviewed. According to Indusface, computers that have been infected with the Gamarue botnet open doors to hackers and make it easier for them to take control of one’s business data and devices. Nigeria also has the fourth lowest DDOS attacks among all African countries reviewed, with an average of 21 attacks per 100,000 internet users.
Egypt is third with a cyber-security index score of 72.85 and an average of 12 DDOS per 100,000 internet users, the second lowest number of attacks among all African countries reviewed.
The research by Indusface comes amid findings that 68 percent of high-revenue growth companies have embraced a hybrid (or remote working) model worldwide, with benefits that include reduced maintenance costs, improved flexibility and extended talent pool, making cyber security awareness more critical than ever.
At the global level, Honduras, South Korea, and Japan are the most cyber-secure countries.
With a total cyber-security score of 89.55 out of 100, Honduras ranks as the most cyber-secure country in the world for businesses to allow employees to remotely work from. The country also has the lowest average number of DDOS attacks and phishing sites in the world, making businesses more assured of their cyber security.
South Korea comes second with only 13 compromised computers per 100,000 internet users and an overall cyber-security score of 88.85/100.
Japan comes in at third place with an overall cyber security score of 87.49 and the lowest DDOS attacks per 100,000 internet users (12) among the top 5 most secure countries. This, according to Indusface, is an important factor for businesses to consider as successful DDOS attacks could block business sites and bring down all servers and connections a business depends on.
Commenting on the remote work across the world, Venky Sundar, Founder and President of Indusface, said attracting top talent through remote work can revolutionise businesses.
“However, it also leaves your sensitive data and assets vulnerable to hackers. Therefore, it is important to be prepared to address remote work security risks,” Sundar said.
For businesses looking to recruit talents globally, Sundar advised that, firstly, they could consider which countries are least targeted by hackers and least risk to their cyber security.
“Secondly, look at regulations that govern data security. For example, GDPR is probably the gold standard when it comes to data security,” Sundar said.
“Thirdly, research law enforcement. This indicates how quickly people will be punished when committing cybercrime.
“Fourthly, get to know the government grants. Cybersecurity grants are provided to SMBs who tend to be more susceptible to attacks.
“Fifthly, the level of cybersecurity awareness in the generation also affects how likely hackers would commit cyber crimes,” he said.
Sundar advised businesses to make remote work access security an integral part of their employees’ ongoing training and workplace culture.
He further outlined eight best practices for secure remote working within a business to include: Create strong authentication, Update your systems and encrypt your devices, Conquer internal security risks, Avoid weak or duplicate passwords, Only upload files to secure systems, and Secure web application security.
To arrive at these findings, Indusface said it analysed historical cyber-attack data per country to find the most secure countries to work from. It sourced detected cyber-attacks between 2015 and 2021 from the Digital Attack Map. The dataset was then cleaned and aggregated by country to find the total number of attacks and the distribution of attacks by attack type.
Furthermore, Indusface used Python data mining tools to extract cybersecurity statistics from over 90 Microsoft Security Intelligence reports (2017) resulting in a comprehensive dataset containing the number of phishing sites, malware hosting sites, and compromised computers (part of Gamarue botnet). Phishing sites and malware hosting sites data collected was presented on a per 100,000 urls basis, and compromised computers and DDOS attacks were presented per 100,000 internet users. Thereafter, an index score of cyber security score was computed taking into account the above factors to assess the favourability of each country as a workation destination.
Indusface said the data used for the analysis was collected in June 2023 and is correct as of then.
