Top 10 most cyber secure European countries to work from

Bulgaria ranks the least secure European countries for businesses to allow employees to remotely work from, with a total cybersecurity score of only 51.82 out of 100. With 1,220 phishing sites and 1,170 malware hosting sites per 100,000 urls, businesses in the country will need to be extra careful when identifying whether a website is genuine.

Serbia owns one of the highest number of compromised computers per 100,000 internet users (1,467) which leads to its low cyber security score of 53.83 – ranking as the second least cybersecure European country.

Venky Sundar, Founder and President of Indusface comments on working remotely across the world:  “Attracting top talent through remote work can revolutionise your business. However, it also leaves your sensitive data and assets vulnerable to hackers. Therefore, it is important to be prepared to address remote work security risks. There are a few points when recruiting talents globally: 

“Firstly, you could consider which countries are least targeted by hackers and least risk to your cyber security. 

“Secondly, look at regulations that govern data security. For example, GDPR is probably the gold standard when it comes to data security. 

“Thirdly, research law enforcement. This indicates how quickly people will be punished when committing cybercrime. 

“Fourthly, get to know the government grants. Cybersecurity grants are provided to SMBs who tend to be more susceptible to attacks. 

“Fifthly, the level of cybersecurity awareness in the generation also affects how likely hackers would commit cyber crimes.” 

Venky Sundar, Founder and President of Indusface provides six  top tips for businesses who apply remote or hybrid working: “There is no one way to secure remote working but instead you should make remote work access security an integral part of your employee’s ongoing training and workplace culture. Here are eight  best practices for secure remote working within your business: 

1. Create strong authentication 

It starts by identifying the remote worker before a worker can access corporate data and assets. From this, you can build audit trails of the actions against the identity.

2. Update your systems and encrypt your devices

Outdated technology could open doors to hackers with credential information like credit cards being stolen. Cases like this will have a fatal hit on your business’s reputation as well as cyber security. It is highly recommended that all your devices be updated and encrypted with SSL certificates. 

3. Conquer internal security risks

Working habits could lead to malware or ransomware attacks that could put your company and your clients at risk. We really recommend hosting full employee training on cyber security and making it fun. You could get your team engaged in the training by setting up phishing email simulators so they could see the potential dangers in action. 

4. Avoid weak or duplicate passwords

Many businesses share duplicate passwords for multiple accounts. Research shows hackers rely on weak passwords when brute forcing PoS terminals. Use an automatic password generator to create safe and secure passwords companywide. 

5. Only upload files to secure systems

Hackers could upload their own files with malicious code that can be executed directly on your server. Therefore, it is important to avoid storing data in unencrypted storage, leaving data on devices without password protection, and attaching sensitive information directly into an email. 

6. Secure web application security

Using a combination of open-source CMS and cloud-based apps increases your remote work risks. It should be considered as part of your security policy to approve web app purchases and free downloads.

Methodology

1. Indusface conducted the following research analysing historical cyber attack data per country to find the most secure countries to work from.

2. Firstly, detected cyber attacks between 2015-2021 were sourced from the Digital Attack Map. The dataset was subsequently cleaned and aggregated by country to find the total number of attacks and the distribution of attacks by attack type.

3. Then, Python data mining tools were used to extract cybersecurity statistics from over 90 Microsoft Security Intelligence reports (2017)  resulting in a comprehensive dataset containing the number of phishing sites, malware hosting sites, compromised computers (part of gamarue botnet). 

4. Phishing sites and malware hosting sites data collected above was presented on a per 100,000 urls basis, and compromised computers and DDOS attacks were presented per 100,000 internet users.

5. An index score of cyber security score was then computed taking into account the above four factors to assess the favorability of each country as a workation destination.

6. The data was collected in June 2023 and is correct as of then.