Australia scored number eight out of 30 major nations for "cyber intent" in the National Cyber Power Index 2020[1] (NCPI) published earlier this month, but only number 16 for "cyber capability".
That capability gap pulls Australia down to number 10 after, in order, the US at number one, China, UK, Russia, Netherlands, France, Germany, Canada, and Japan.
Looking at individual data points, Australia is way down in an unsurprising 24th place when it comes to fixed broadband speed, behind Ukraine and only just ahead of Vietnam.
It's down at 16th place for internet freedom, scoring 72 out of a possible 100 points. The five leading nations in this category were Sweden, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Estonia.
Australia is in the bottom half of the 30 ranked countries in things such as patent applications per capita; the number of global top 100 firms in all three tracked categories of tech, cyber, and surveillance; its military strategy and centralised cyber command; and its total number of cyber military personnel.
Australia is number five in e-commerce per capita, however. It's also number five for mobile data speeds, after South Korea, China, Canada, and the Netherlands.
The NCPI was compiled by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School as part of its China Cyber Policy Initiative.
The methodology detailed in the report is complex, and it makes some assumptions which cause your correspondent to have some doubts about the index's effectiveness.
The key issue is that the report is based entirely on publicly-available information, which means that secretive nations may be misrepresented. The researchers acknowledge this, however.
"We recognise that countries deliberately choosing to be opaque will be vastly under-ranked