Poland was ranked 17th on a list prepared by Comparitech, a British analytical company specialising in cyber-security and online privacy. Poland’s digital security level was rated higher than Germany, France and Spain. The most digitally secure country is Denmark.

In this year’s comparison, Comparitech increased the number of analysed countries (from 60 to 75) and doubled the number of criteria (from seven to 15) that were considered. New categories included the percentage of mobile devices infected with malware, the amount of spam produced in a country, computers attacked at least once, or the efficiency of a country’s cyber fortification.

No country surveyed scored 100 per cent, but Denmark proved to be the safest overall, ranking in the top three in 10 out of 15 categories. It did particularly well against Trojan attacks and defence against cryptocurrency mines. It was immediately followed by Sweden, then Ireland, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands. The top spot therefore definitely belongs to the Scandinavian countries, leading also in the lists arranged according to individual criteria.

In the overall ranking, Poland is in 17th place, much higher than, for example, France (40th place), Germany (44th) or Spain (59th). Comparitech representatives point out that this position was determined by the very low percentage of users attacked by ransomware trojans, including mobile ones.

Noteworthy, Poland is one of the few countries where the number of cyber attacks has decreased or simply not increased, with the onset of the pandemic.

However, there is still much room for improvement. In Poland last year, CERT recorded more than 29,000 incidents, of which 8,339 were media-related attacks. They are only reported incidents, and in many cases, such as production machines, the existing infrastructure does not even allow noticing if an individual is under attack.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński