LatAm Countries Are Unprepared for Cyber Attacks Robert Schoon - Latin Post
go to original March 20, 2016

Latin America needs to get on its cybersecurity game, according to a new study. (Cyber War Desk)

Latin America and the Caribbean region are unprepared for the security challenges of the Internet age, as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Organization of American States (OAS) sent a call for Latin American countries to step up their cybersecurity efforts.

The call comes as the two institutions, along with Oxford University, released a study this week, "The 2016 Cybersecurity Report: Are we Ready in Latin America and the Caribbean?" showing that much of Latin America is highly vulnerable to potentially devastating cyber attacks.

The report analyzed the state of cybersecurity preparedness in 32 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on 49 different criteria of readiness against cyber crime, cyber attacks, and other threats the Internet age has brought.

Those indicators were grouped in five areas: policy and strategy, culture and society education, legal framework, and technology. The report included technical data and analysis of key elements such as the capacity of countries' networks to respond to major breaches and other malicious cyber attacks.

The result? While a few major Latin American countries, like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, were found at an "intermediate level of preparedness," even those countries lag far behind leading countries like the U.S., Israel, Korea, and Estonia.

Worse yet, sixteen countries in the study were found to have zero coordinated capacity to respond to cyber attacks. Only four countries ranked above the "intermediate level" of preparedness, while only six had a structured program of education in cybersecurity, including the budgetary stability and mechanisms necessary for research on cyber threats and learning how to respond to them.

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