Brazil a Major Cybersecurity Risk Ahead of Rio Olympics

• By Sydny Shepard
• May 27, 2016

People around the world have worried about Brazil’s readiness for the Summer Olympics as news of the Zika virus, political unrest and even poor ticket sales have plagued the news surrounding the event. Now, those attending the Olympics will also have to worry about cybersecurity.

A new report from BitSight Technologies shows security performance in Brazil is among the worst in the developed nations.

BigSight researchers analyzed the security performance of a random sample of 250 companies per country from the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Germany, China and Brazil. They used this information to create a Security Rating taking into account things like machine compromise rates, SSL vulnerabilities, peer-to-peer file sharing, email security protocols and more.

In their research, BitSight found that companies based in Brazil have the lowest aggregate Security Rating, while companies in the UK and Germany have the highest. Brazil and the US have the poorest performance when it comes to preventing and mitigating botnet infections.

“Just as business practices and laws differ across countries, so do cyber security practices,” co-founder and CTO of BitSight Technologes, Stephen Boyer said. “When expanding globally, it is imperative to communicate best practices and establish a standard of security performance that can be implemented across the entire supply chain.”