The ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre, with the help of Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull MP, today launches its inaugural examination of the Asia-Pacific cyberspace landscape and finds that Australia fairs well against its regional neighbours, ranking higher than China in terms of its overall national ‘cyber maturity’. You can download this report here.

The Asia-Pacific region has increasingly become a global point of strategic interest and competition. The region is both at the heart of global economic growth as well as simmering territorial disputes and political tensions between nations. The development of cyberspace and the information and communications technology (ICT) that powers it has proven to be an integral part of the region’s socioeconomic growth.

Although increasing connectivity has generated undeniable benefits, it has also created new vulnerabilities for governments and the private sector in the areas of national security and online crime. In an environment such as cyberspace where gains are high, the probability of capture is low and deniability rules, many different economic and political confrontations are playing out simultaneously.

To make considered, evidence-based cyber policy judgements in this regional context, there’s a need for better tools and information to assess the ‘cyber maturity’ of nations in the region. In response to this over the past twelve months the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre has developed a Cyber Maturity Metric which provides a guide to the regional picture.  The UK and the US were included in the study as a benchmark upon which to gauge how well other nations were developing their responses to the challenges and opportunities that cyberspace offers.

Nations’ cyber maturity was measured across four different topics, governance structures, military application, digital economies and business, and social engagement.  Scores were applied across research questions across those topics and then a total cyber maturity score was given out of 100.  The sixteen nations’ overall scores were:

Cambodia   20.1

United States   86.3

United Kingdom  81.2

Australia   75.8

South Korea   75.5

Japan    75.3

Singapore   74.7

China    58.4

Malaysia   57.9

India    45.9

Philippines   43.4

Indonesia   42.4

Thailand   41.6

Myanmar   29.7

Papua New Guinea  23.0

North Korea   20.7