Summary
- Comparitech ranks Finland first on 96.2 and Australia second on 95.2 in its 50-economy index.
- Comparitech reports little GDP correlation, without a coefficient or weighting methodology independently verified here.
- Its index assesses institutional preparedness, not demonstrated resistance to attacks or recovery performance.
In a new assessment of the world’s 50 largest economies, Comparitech ranks Finland first for national cybersecurity preparedness and reports little correlation between GDP and its composite scores. The ranking measures selected legal, governance and research indicators; it does not test countries’ ability to resist attacks or restore services after an incident.
Comparitech assigned Finland a score of 96.2, followed by Australia on 95.2. The Netherlands and Austria shared the next position at 94.7, and France followed on 94.6. Comparitech based its scores on national legislation, cyber governance and specialist capability rather than on the total size of a domestic cybersecurity market.
Comparitech places Iran last on 44.2, followed by Mexico on 48.5, Pakistan on 50.2, Argentina on 60.3 and Egypt on 61.3. Its release says GDP showed little correlation with the final scores, but the supplied material does not specify a correlation coefficient, statistical test or index weightings. Those elements could not be independently checked against the full study.
Comparitech says its model examines three broad dimensions: legal and regulatory frameworks, national cyber governance, and cyber capability and human capital. These are institutional characteristics that can influence a country’s response to digital threats, but they are not the same thing as measured resistance to intrusion, a count of successful compromises or the time required to restore national services after a major cyber incident.
Legislation and reporting remain uneven
According to Comparitech, 14 of the 50 economies lacked standalone national cybersecurity legislation and a further eight had only partial legislation. Five lacked mandatory incident reporting for attacks affecting critical infrastructure. Differences in legal powers and reporting requirements can affect how much visibility national authorities have over incidents, although the existence of a law alone does not prove that it is enforced or produces effective operational outcomes. A country without a standalone cyber law may still impose sector-specific duties through other legislation, so the classification should not be read as a complete inventory of enforceable obligations.
The researchers also found that 18 countries had not signed, ratified or acceded to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. The convention is an international framework for cooperation on offences involving computer systems and electronic evidence. Participation may assist cross-border investigation, but its legal status is only one part of national cyber capability and does not determine a country’s entire resilience posture.
Comparitech used research output as one indicator of specialist capability. It reported that the United States had the greatest number of universities producing cited cybersecurity research, at 832, while Taiwan led on the per-capita measure, at 4.3 institutions per million people. Total counts and population-adjusted counts answer different questions: the former reflects scale, while the latter can highlight concentration of research institutions in smaller economies.
The research release separately claims that seven of the world’s largest economies accounted for 64% of reported ransomware victims in the second quarter of 2026. That figure describes a distribution of reported cases, not a controlled measure of national vulnerability. Large economies have more organisations, connected assets and recorded incidents, while differences in disclosure practice affect which cases appear in public datasets.
For European policymakers, the comparisons sit alongside expanding requirements for critical infrastructure reporting and product security. A country with established governance may still experience a serious operational failure, and a country with weaker legislative scores may nevertheless have individual organisations with mature technical defences. National and organisational outcomes should not be treated as interchangeable measures.
The resulting league table describes differences in Comparitech’s selected preparedness indicators among large economies. Without verified weightings, an identified GDP benchmark year or observed recovery outcomes, it cannot establish that economic strength has no effect on real-world cyber resilience.
