Bangladesh jumps 25 notches up to rank 53 in Global Cybersecurity Index

Bangladesh has jumped up 25 places to be ranked 53 in the Global Cybersecurity Index 2020, according to a report of the United Nations.

The index was published yesterday by the International Telecommunication Union (IUT), a specialised agency of the UN, to measure the commitment of its member states to cybersecurity aiming to promote cybersecurity awareness.

Earlier, Bangladesh was ranked 78th in the IUT's previous edition.

The GCI results show overall improvement and strengthening of all five pillars of the cybersecurity agenda—legal measures, technical measures, organisational measures, capacity development measures, and cooperation measures.

In the index which was based on last year's data, Bangladesh scored 81.27 out of 100 points in the index.

Neighbouring country India made a big leap in the index, with a jump of 37 places to rank 10 in GCI.

Bangladesh ranks 11th in the index for the Asia-Pacific region. Korea and Singapore are jointly in the first position with 98.52 points.

The US was ranked on the first spot, followed by the UK sharing the second spot with Saudi Arabia, Estonia was ranked third, South Korea, Singapore and Spain ranked the fourth, Russia, United Arab Emirates and Malaysia shared the fifth spot.

The report said: "Several countries are outliers among least developed countries, such as Bangladesh, Benin, Rwanda, and Tanzania, which have demonstrated strong cybersecurity commitments. Notably, these countries all reported having national cybersecurity industries, a key feature of capacity development measures."

 "Our law and the effective responses from our law enforcement agencies contribute to this big leap in the GCI index," Mustafa Jabbar, post, telecommunication and information technology minister, told The Daily Star.