India has ranked tenth best in the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) 2020, launched by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021. The nation is emerging as a global IT superpower, asserting its digital sovereignty with firm measures to safeguard data privacy and the online rights of citizens.

The affirmation by the UN body of India's efforts on cybersecurity comes just ahead of the sixth anniversary of Digital India on July 1.

As per the ranking, India has moved up by 37 places to rank as the tenth best country. The US topped the chart, followed by the UK and Saudi Arabia tied on the second position, while Estonia was ranked third in the index.

India has also secured the fourth position in the Asia Pacific region, underlining its commitment to cybersecurity.

GCI assessment is done based on performance on five parameters of cybersecurity including legal measures, technical measures, organisational measures, capacity development, and cooperation. The performance is then aggregated into an overall score.

For each of the five aspects, all the countries' performance and commitment were assessed through a question-based online survey, which further allowed for the collection of the supporting evidence.

Through in-depth consultations with a group of experts, the questions were then weighted and assessed, to arrive at the overall scores.

The GCI results for India show substantial overall improvement and strengthening under all parameters of the cybersecurity domain. India scored a total of 97.5 points from a possible maximum of 100 points, to make it to the tenth position worldwide in the GCI 2020.

India has worked relentlessly on all the five pillars over the last few years, resulting in significant improvement in its ranking in Global Cyber Security Index.