El Salvador is known for its adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender in 2021. El Salvador’s
internet penetration rate stood at 50.5 % of the total population at the start of 2022, with over 4 million social media users. El Salvador is making important
progress towards digitalisation in terms of infrastructure capacity and reliability, but there are still challenges to overcome, such as access and affordability to internet connections, especially in rural areas. Regarding data protection, El Salvador still lacks a comprehensive data protection law, although the country has made improvements in the past years.
Over the past decade, Australia has been a frontrunner in terms of digital transformation; the country ranked 11
th globally on the
2020 Global Connectivity Index and 2
nd in the Indo-Pacific. Australia’s
better-than-expected economic performance in 2021 was largely owed to increased government efforts at promoting the digitalisation of businesses and government services, with significant investment being poured into the ICT sector under the
Digital Economy Strategy and the
Regional Connectivity Program. Meanwhile, however, self-reported losses from cybercrime amounted to more than $33 billion during the 2020-2021 financial year (
E), while roughly a quarter of cyber incidents reported during the same period involved Australia’s critical infrastructure or essential services (
E). In the cyber diplomacy realm, Australia has traditionally been a prominent member of the ‘like-minded’ group, promoting a vision of a free, open, and secure cyberspace that is very much in line with EU values and efforts.
According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), as of 2021, Peru had an
internet penetration rate of around 71.1 %. However other
indexes place this number in the mid 60’s. Although many improvements were made in the past few years, Peru still possesses low network coverage, especially in rural areas and a relatively low network performance.
The government of Peru has been implementing initiatives to increase connectivity in rural areas, including a
national broadband plan and a program to deploy free Wi-Fi hotspots in public spaces, with a year-on-year increase of almost 100 %.
Peru ranked 86 out of 182 countries
surveyed in the ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Index in 2020.