With the lowest cyber crime rates, heightened security defences, and continuous investment in initiatives, Denmark retains its title as the most cyber secure country in the world, closely followed by Germany, the United States, Norway, the UK, Canada, Sweden, and Australia.
While Denmark is established as a benchmark in the industry, the journey hasn’t always been straightforward. In 2016, members of the Danish Defence were targeted by a devastating attack, that led to hackers gaining access to email accounts and non-classified documents.
Now, Denmark achieves a score of 0.00% for users attacked by mobile ransomware trojans and mobile banking trojans, with just 0.02% of Danish users attacked by ransomware trojans.
Two-factor authentication
In recent years, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authorities (DFSA) have conducted inspections on various payment service providers in Denmark to assess the use of customer authentication in accordance with the Danish Payment Act.
The Danish Payment Act sets out to ensure that payment transactions are only initiated and completed with strong customer authentication to successfully help block attack vectors.
Major investments in cyber security
Organisations and companies all over the world tend to underinvest in cybersecurity measures due to the struggle to economically justify such investments in a business case.
With this in mind, Denmark continues to multiply its cyber security efforts every year with investments expected to reach a total of EUR 36 million between 2022 and 2024 in accordance with the 2018-2023 Defense Agreement. The agreement also states plans to invest DKK 1.5 billion (€202 million) in cyber and information security over the next few years to include better protection by expanding the Centre for Cyber Security's sensor network for authorities and businesses.
Denmark’s cyber security strategy demonstrates the need not only to invest in security efforts but also investing in public research relevant to cyber security.
Cyber security initiatives
The Danish government introduced a variety of initiatives to strengthen Denmark’s cyber defence, featuring an investment of DKK 270 million to over 30 new initiatives designed to drive Denmark to become even more digitally secure.
Some of these initiatives include:
- Robust protection of vital societal functions by ensuring businesses and government agencies have a sufficient level of security
- Increased level of skills and management commitment through training and building stronger capacity to meet demand
- Strengthening the cooperation between the public and private sectors by sharing knowledge and learning invaluable insights from each other
- Active participation in the international fight against cyber threats in the European Union, United Nations, NATO and like-minded countries
Legislation and laws
Denmark’s legal landscape is made up of several laws promoting cyber security. As an example, operators of essential services must implement an appropriate level of technical and organisational security requirements.
Furthermore, essential services should report security incidents to the authorities as soon as possible after becoming aware of an incident. This becomes increasingly important if the incident significantly affects the continuity of operations.
Failure to comply with any laws and regulations aimed at protecting national cyber security is punishable by a fine.
Other factors
The introduction of widespread implementation of two-factor authentication, better-developed banking apps, strict legislation and numerous laws promoting cyber security have resulted in Denmark maintaining its position as one of the most digitised countries in the world.
Other factors include the wide-ranging digitisation of public services, a technologically proficient population, and businesses implementing new technology at a fast pace.
Want to learn more?
One thing is certain - countries focusing their efforts on creating cyber security strategies will be in a better position to prevent cyber attacks, mitigate their damage, and better protect their operations, employees, customers, and critical infrastructure.
Take a read of our Cyber Security Around the World eBook to find out more!
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