Katy Salgado - January 8, 2025

Cybersecurity Country Rankings 2025

The 10 most and least cybersecure countries in the world

European and North American countries are among the safest, while Latin America and the Middle East are at high risk.

Our Cybercrime Report 2025 showed that cybercrime continues to grow, posing one of the most severe threats to global security and economies.

However, some countries are more exposed than others. Our Cybercrime Risk Score shows which countries are the safest, and which are at greatest risk.

To assess this, we looked at several factors. These include measures and indexes for cybercrime exposure, cybersecurity capabilities/preparedness, digital development, and legislation.

With four countries on this list (Panama, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay), Latin America seems to have some of the biggest problems with cybersecurity.

The Middle East also seems to have some issues; though both the UAE and Saudi Arabia got perfect GCI scores, showing their commitment to cybersecurity development, there is still a lot of work to be done to reduce their exposure and increase their readiness for cybercrime.

Belarus, Georgia, Thailand and Mauritius also score highly in cybercrime risk.

Meanwhile, Europe leads the way in cybersecurity.Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway) scored especially well, taking 4 of the top 7 spots.

France, the UK, Spain and Germany are also among the lowest-risk countries.

North America is the other region that does particularly well on our Cybercrime Risk Score, with the US (notwithstanding its list of cybercrime hot spots) and Canada also making the list of safest countries.

Katy Salgado, Operations Manager at Proxyrack and head of this cybercrime research, thinks higher and lower-risk countries can tackle cybersecurity by focusing on differing priorities:

“This data on cybercrime risk by country shows how factors like cybersecurity readiness, digital infrastructure, and exposure vary widely around the world. This information highlights which regions may be more susceptible to cyber threats, helping guide strategic planning and response frameworks. Higher-risk countries may require more intensive security protocols and monitoring, while lower-risk countries often benefit from stronger digital infrastructure and robust cybersecurity practices. This perspective assists in allocating resources to support safer digital environments across different markets.”

Proxyrack: Insights from Internal Data

As a proxy provider, our services - including residential proxies and datacenter proxies - could be targeted or misused in various ways. For this reason, it’s critical for a proxy provider to have strong anti-abuse measures in place, such as monitoring for suspicious activity, implementing KYC protocols, and locking accounts linked to potential misuse.

These are the top 10 countries from our customer database where users are being suspended or locked due to potential malicious use of our services.

Accounts may be locked for various reasons to prevent malicious use of our services, including trial abuse, links to suspicious or fraudulent accounts, malicious request pattern recognition automation, chargebacks, KYC (Know Your Customer) issues, use of disposable email addresses, and high-risk transactions. This process is essential for maintaining the integrity of our platform, safeguarding user data, and reducing the risk of fraud.

Given the rising cybersecurity threats, proactive measures like locking accounts in our services are essential to safeguarding against malicious activity. As investments in cybersecurity lag—such as only 50% of US businesses having full cyber insurance and a global shortage of cybersecurity professionals—businesses must rely on effective security protocols. Locking accounts linked to trial abuse, suspicious activity, or high-risk transactions aligns with the Zero Trust model, ensuring that every user and device is verified. This approach, coupled with advanced threat detection technologies, helps prevent breaches and protects our services from potential misuse.

Methodology

Global Cybercrime Cost Forecast

We used Cybersecurity Magazine estimations of the global cost of cybercrime for 2015 ($3 trillion USD), 2021 ($6 trillion USD), 2024 ($9.5 trillion USD) and 2025 ($10.5 trillion USD) as base data points. From these, we derived an exponential growth model to estimate the missing years and to project a forecast until 2030.

Cybercrime Country Rankings

We used the Human Development Index for our seeding list, using countries with a high human development score. We then removed any countries with missing data.

We used the Basel AML Index for the Basel AML Index scores.

We used the CEI 2020 for the Global Cybersecurity Exposure Index.

We used the NCSI for the National Cyber Security Index and Digital Development Level.

We used the ITU Global Cybersecurity Index 2024 for the GCI score, measuring the commitment of countries to cybersecurity.

We put this data into a weighted table, giving each factor a normalized score out of ten. We then took an average of these scores to provide each country's overall cybercrime risk score.