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Security report for gov.mt

Government of Malta · Government · Malta

Medium risk. 8 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, Security headers and 1 other check.

Security score

65/100

Risk levelMedium

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

The website gov.mt is the official government portal for Malta, intended to provide access to government services and information to residents and visitors. However, the provided HTML content is a Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA challenge page, indicating that the actual website content is blocked behind a Web Application Firewall (WAF) security mechanism. This prevents direct analysis of the website's content, policies, and contact information. The domain registration data confirms the legitimacy of the site as a government entity of Malta. Technically, the site is protected by Cloudflare's security services, including Turnstile CAPTCHA, which enhances protection against automated threats but also restricts content accessibility for analysis. No visible metadata, privacy policies, or business contact details are present in the accessible content. The lack of visible security headers and policies in the challenge page limits the security posture assessment. From a security perspective, the use of Cloudflare WAF and CAPTCHA indicates a strong security posture against automated attacks. However, the absence of visible security policies and contact information in the accessible content is a limitation. Overall, the site is legitimate and trustworthy as a government domain but currently inaccessible for detailed content and compliance analysis due to WAF restrictions.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
10/ 100 · Critical
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

8 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • Critical

      EU business without adequate privacy measures

      EU businesses are subject to strict GDPR requirements

      What to do: Implement comprehensive GDPR compliance including privacy policy, cookie consent, and data protection measures

    • High

      No Privacy Policy found

      GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

      What to do: Add a comprehensive privacy policy page and link to it prominently

    • High

      No Cookie Policy found

      GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

      What to do: Add a dedicated cookie policy explaining cookie usage and purposes

  2. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching gov.mt

This scan found 21 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

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  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

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Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
82
Security headers
35
Email security
75
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
10
Average
65

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

gov.mt serves as the official digital gateway for the Government of Malta, targeting citizens and visitors requiring government services and information. The business model is public sector service provision, with no commercial revenue streams. The domain and registrant data align with the government entity, confirming authenticity. The website likely supports multiple government departments and services, although this cannot be confirmed from the blocked content. The partnership ecosystem includes Cloudflare as a security and hosting provider. Growth indicators and detailed operational insights are not available due to content inaccessibility.

Security posture

The website employs Cloudflare's WAF and Turnstile CAPTCHA, demonstrating a proactive security approach to mitigate automated threats and abuse. However, the lack of visible security headers and absence of published security policies or incident response contacts in the accessible content limits the assessment of comprehensive security maturity. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the challenge page. Compliance with GDPR or other data protection regulations cannot be confirmed from the accessible content. Incident response readiness and security culture indicators are not visible.

Recommendations

  1. Provide publicly accessible privacy and cookie policies to enhance transparency and compliance.
  2. Publish clear contact information including security incident response contacts to improve trust and incident handling.
  3. Implement and expose security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options on all pages.
  4. Consider user experience improvements to reduce friction caused by CAPTCHA challenges where appropriate.
  5. Regularly audit and update security posture documentation and ensure compliance with GDPR and other relevant regulations.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Cloudflare detected. The HTML content is a Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA challenge page indicating the website content is blocked behind a WAF security challenge. These observations may be incomplete. For a fuller analysis, contact guard@offseq.com.

Business

Company
Government of Malta
Description
Official government portal for Malta providing access to government services and information.
Key services
Government information dissemination, Access to public services, Citizen engagement
Content quality
poor
Branding
moderate

Technology

Stack
Cloudflare, Cloudflare Turnstile Captcha

Analytics and tracking

Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Transparency
poor

Site quality

Design
poor
User experience
poor
Content relevance
poor
Navigation
poor
Professionalism
poor
Trustworthiness
moderate

Key observations

  1. Website content is not accessible due to Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA challenge.
  2. No visible privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies found in the provided HTML.
  3. No contact information or forms are present in the HTML content.
  4. No analytics or tracking scripts detected beyond Cloudflare security scripts.
  5. Website is protected by Cloudflare WAF with Turnstile CAPTCHA.
  6. No SEO or accessibility metadata detected due to blocked content.
  7. No business or security policy documentation visible.
  8. Website is an official government domain for Malta.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is hosted behind Cloudflare, leveraging its security and performance services including Turnstile CAPTCHA for bot mitigation. The technical stack includes Cloudflare's challenge platform scripts. No CMS or other frameworks are detectable from the challenge page. Performance and SEO cannot be assessed due to content blockage. The site likely uses modern infrastructure but technical debt or modernization opportunities cannot be evaluated. The presence of a WAF and CAPTCHA indicates a focus on security but may impact accessibility and user experience.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 47/100High29 findingsView report
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