Australia's government cyber security capacity has fallen in a global ranking and now sits among the worst in the world. But one expert disagrees with the recent finding, saying it doesn't accurately reflect the nation's cyber credentials. Despite the poor ranking, Australia performed well overall in the 2024 World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, with strong gains in the artificial intelligence space boosting its position. Australia ranked 15th out of 67 countries in the annual ranking by the International Institute for Management Development, moving up one place since last year. However in the category of government cyber security, Australia dropped seven places to rank 46th among the other nations. The report suggested the Australian government lacks sufficient skills and resources to mitigate harm from cyber security threats, Committee for Economic Development of Australia senior economist Melissa Wilson said. "We know over the past couple of years, there's obviously been some very high profile cyber security attacks, which I expect were front and centre when people are thinking about that question," she said. Within months of each other in 2022, Optus and Medibank experienced major cyber attacks that affected millions of Australians. Robert Potter, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Centre for European Studies and a cyber security expert, said Australia's openness could have contributed to its poor performance. "I think one of the reasons why Australia scores badly on these things is because we're so much more open about where we're struggling," he said. "When you go to countries like Japan or Singapore, the image presented is one of being completely whole and being technologically advanced but in reality they're struggling as much, if not more, than we are." Australia was one of few countries that openly talked about its offensive cyber security, Mr Potter said. "Australia's got a very robust and highly capable offensive cyber security capacity that regularly supports intelligence, counter-terrorism and criminal investigations," he said. "A country like Japan or South Korea will routinely be hacked and not disclose that information, whereas when it happens in Australia we've got an active media and that stuff becomes public information." Ms Wilson said the results showed training and education in the digital space were also lacking. "If we want to be a world leader and a digital leader, we need to get some of these fundamentals in place to get us there," she said. Mr Potter agreed there was work to be done on the educational side. "Certainly there's a massive shortage of technical skills in cyber security, that's true everywhere," he said. Despite ranking first for mobile broadband subscribers, Australia worst performance was in the internet bandwidth speed category, where it came 50th. "This is a consistent area of weakness for us and one we must do better on as high-speed internet is a critical enabler of a range of digital technologies," Ms Wilson said. Australia performed well in two new measures on artificial intelligence, ranking eighth for AI policies passed into law and 13th on the level of peer-reviewed literature on AI. Ms Wilson said while research and policy was strong, the proof would be in how well that translated in practice. "What those measures don't show is what's happening on the ground in business, and we need to be investing and competing in these places," she said. MORE NEWS: More broadly, the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking showed Australian businesses must do better at seizing new digital technologies, Ms Wilson said. "Despite our improvements on technology, Australia's overall future readiness remains poor, with continued low rankings on the agility of companies (39th) and their ability to respond quickly to opportunities and threats (37th)," she said.