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Security report for neh.gov

National Endowment for the Humanities · Government · United States

High risk. 4 critical or high findings in DNS health, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

49/100

Risk levelHigh

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

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is a large, independent federal agency dedicated to supporting humanities research, education, and public programming across the United States. Established in 1965, NEH has a strong market position as the largest public funder of humanities projects, providing over $6 billion in grants to a wide range of cultural and educational institutions. The website reflects a professional and authoritative presence consistent with a government entity, targeting scholars, educators, cultural organizations, and the general public interested in humanities initiatives. Technically, the website is built on Drupal 10, leveraging modern web technologies such as Google Tag Manager, YouTube APIs, and accessibility features. The site demonstrates good performance and mobile optimization, with a clear navigation structure and comprehensive content. Security posture is strong with HTTPS enforcement and content security policies, though there is room for improvement in cookie consent mechanisms and publishing incident response contacts. From a security and compliance perspective, the site maintains privacy and vulnerability disclosure policies, but lacks explicit cookie consent and a security.txt file. WHOIS data is unavailable, which is typical for .gov domains, but this does not detract from the site's legitimacy given its official status and consistent branding. Overall, NEH's website is a trustworthy, well-maintained government resource with excellent content quality and a solid technical foundation. Strategic recommendations include enhancing privacy compliance with cookie consent, publishing incident response contacts, and adding a security.txt file to further improve security transparency.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 100 · Medium
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

4 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. DNS health

    DNS sends visitors and email to the right servers. Misconfigured records can cause outages or let someone redirect your traffic.

    • Critical

      Domain Expired

      Domain expired 7 days ago

      What to do: Renew domain registration immediately

  2. GDPR outside view

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

    • 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

    • High

      No Cookie Consent Banner found

      GDPR requires explicit consent for non-essential cookies

      What to do: Implement a cookie consent banner that appears on first visit

  3. SSL/TLS

    TLS encrypts the connection and proves the site is really yours. Weak or expiring certificates trigger browser warnings and put traffic at risk.

    • High

      Weak Protocols Supported

      Server supports weak protocols: TLSv1.1

      What to do: Disable TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and all SSL versions

      • CWE-327
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V12.1.1

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

Keep watching neh.gov

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.

Daily monitoring

Recommended

€25per month

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

Email alerts on material changes and an exportable JSON history of every change.

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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
72
Security headers
75
Email security
85
DNS health
30
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
69
After the cap
49

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 · found on this site
  • 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

NEH operates as a government funding agency with a focus on humanities sectors including history, literature, philosophy, and cultural studies. Its business model centers on grantmaking and supporting public humanities projects nationwide. The agency's competitive advantage lies in its federal backing and extensive funding history. The target audience includes academic institutions, cultural organizations, educators, and researchers. The website's partnership ecosystem includes related government projects such as Edsitement! and Chronicling America. Growth indicators include ongoing funding announcements and initiatives like the 250th Anniversary projects. NEH maintains a strong market presence as a key federal humanities supporter with a clear mission and broad outreach.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with HTTPS enforced and use of Content Security Policy nonces to mitigate script injection risks. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the HTML content. However, the absence of a cookie consent mechanism and security.txt file indicates areas for improvement in privacy compliance and vulnerability disclosure transparency. Incident response contact information is not publicly available, which could hinder rapid communication in case of security events. Overall, the site aligns well with government security standards but could enhance user privacy and incident handling visibility.

Recommendations

  1. Implement a clear cookie consent banner or mechanism to comply with privacy regulations and improve user transparency.
  2. Publish a security.txt file at the root domain to standardize vulnerability disclosure and improve security communication.
  3. Provide explicit incident response contact information or security contact channels on the website.
  4. Regularly review and update third-party scripts and libraries to mitigate potential vulnerabilities.
  5. Enhance HTTP security headers by adding X-Frame-Options and X-Content-Type-Options to strengthen protection against clickjacking and MIME sniffing.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
National Endowment for the Humanities
Description
NEH is an independent federal agency that supports the humanities in every state and U.S. jurisdiction. Since 1965, NEH has awarded over $6 billion to support museums, historic sites, universities, teachers, libraries, documentary filmmakers, public TV and radio stations, research institutions, scholars, and local humanities programming.
Key services
Grant programs, Funding opportunities, Public humanities programming, Research support
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal 10, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Select2, jQuery, YouTube iframe API, Modernizr
Frameworks
Drupal
Performance
moderate
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Content Security Policy nonce used
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of Google Tag Manager with consent mode disabled

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
excellent
User experience
excellent
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
excellent
Professionalism
excellent
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Official US government website with .gov domain
  2. Comprehensive content about humanities funding and initiatives
  3. No signs of malicious or suspicious content
  4. Good use of modern web technologies and accessibility features
  5. Privacy and security policies are present but cookie consent mechanism is lacking
  6. WHOIS data is missing likely due to .gov domain registry policies
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Drupal 10 CMS, utilizing modern JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, Select2, and Google Tag Manager for analytics and event tracking. The site uses responsive design with Google Fonts and supports accessibility features. Performance is moderate with multiple CSS and JS assets loaded, but optimized image usage and lazy loading are present. The hosting provider is not explicitly identified, but the site uses HTTPS with strong SSL configuration. The technical stack is modern and well-maintained, though opportunities exist to streamline third-party dependencies and improve cookie management for privacy compliance.
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

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