According to The National Exposure Index, a report released by cyber security vendor Rapid7 Labs, Canada ranks third on a list of countries most vulnerable to cyber attacks. The goal of the report was to determine which countries are most at risk for deliberate, wide-scale breaches.
Countries were ranked based on their unencrypted services on the public internet, services on the internet that are unsuitable for public access and services that are subject to abuse. Notably, researchers found that countries with the most risk have a significant investment in, and reliance on, a safe and stable internet.
Other interesting findings include the following:
- The top five countries in the 2018 exposure ranking were the United States, China, Canada, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Together, these countries control over 61 million servers on at least one of the ports surveyed.
- There are 13 million exposed endpoints associated with direct database access.
- There are about 40,000 unpatched, out-of-date servers. These servers are at risk of being targeted in future, large-scale disrupted denial-of-service attacks.
- Mature and traditionally profitable countries are not the only ones that rely on a healthy internet. As of 2018, more than half of the entire world maintains an active internet presence.
Rapid7 Labs hopes internet service providers can use these findings, with the help of policy-makers, to create a more secure global internet. To read the full report, click here.
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