A series of online attacks over the past year have spurred Japan and South Korea to bolster their cyberdefenses, improving their ranking on an annual list of countries' "cyber maturity," in which Australia notably dropped.
South Korea last year sustained a barrage of attacks, many of which are thought to have originated in North Korea, while Japan passed legislation putting its National Information Security Center in charge of cybersecurity after hacks on targets including the nation's space agency and its largest defense contractor.
"South Korea and Japan have a different threat environment to Australia's," said Tobias Feakin, director of the International Cyber Policy Center at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which compiled the ranking. "It has only taken them a year to write policies, implement them and smash down barriers in between departments."