ITU's Global Cybersecurity Index 2020

Published on: 30-Jun-21
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Security Issues Cyber Security Add to Study Deck

Context: India jumps 37 places to rank 10th in Global Cyber Security Index (GCI) 2020 released by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations (UN) agency for information and communication technologies (ICT).
Key Points

The affirmation by the UN body of India's efforts on cybersecurity, comes just ahead of the sixth anniversary of Digital India on July 1.
India is emerging as a global IT superpower, asserting its digital sovereignty with firm measures to safeguard data privacy and online rights of citizens.
As per the ranking, India has moved up by 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world in the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI).
India scored 97.5 in GCI, the ITU report showed. Meanwhile, the US was ranked first with a score of 100.
India has also secured the fourth position in the Asia Pacific region, underlining its commitment to cybersecurity.

Global Scenario

The US topped the chart, followed by the UK and Saudi Arabia tied on the second position, while Estonia was ranked third in the index.
While the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Singapore and Spain scored 98.52 each and shared the fourth position.
Russia, UAE and Malaysia tied for fifth place with a score of 98.06. Lithuania, Japan, Canada and France followed in subsequent positions in the list.
Among other nations, Turkey (score - 97.49) was ranked 11, Germany (score - 97.41) was ranked 13, China (score - 92.53) ranked 33 and Israel (score - 90.93) was ranked 36.

Key Parameters to measure performance of the countries
GCI assessment is done on the basis of performance on five parameters of cybersecurity:-

legal measures, technical measures, organisational measures, capacity development, and cooperation.
The performance is then aggregated into an overall score.

For each of the five aspects, all the countries' performance and commitment were assessed through a question-based online survey, which further allowed for the collection of the supporting evidence.

Road Ahead

India has worked relentlessly on all the five pillars over the last few years, resulting in significant improvement in its ranking in Global Cyber Security Index.