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Security report for santa.lv

SIA "Žurnāls Santa" · Media · Latvia

Medium risk. 7 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and Security headers.

Security score

60/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Santa.lv is the largest lifestyle portal in Latvia, offering a wide range of content including health, entertainment, culture, and personal stories. The website supports a subscription model (Santa+) alongside advertising revenue, targeting Latvian-speaking audiences interested in lifestyle topics. The business is well-established with consistent domain registration and a strong market position in the Latvian media sector. Technically, the website employs modern tracking and advertising technologies such as Google Tag Manager, Facebook SDK, and Gemius analytics, hosted behind Cloudflare DNS services. However, the site suffers from significant security shortcomings, notably the absence of a valid SSL certificate and HTTPS support, which severely impacts user trust and security posture. Security-wise, the lack of HTTPS, missing security headers, and no DNSSEC or domain protection locks expose the site to potential risks. Privacy and cookie policies are present and appear GDPR compliant, reflecting a good level of privacy awareness. The site is accessible without WAF or blocking mechanisms, but performance is slow with a large page size and long load times. Overall, Santa.lv is a reputable media portal with excellent content quality and business credibility but requires urgent improvements in security infrastructure to protect users and enhance trust. Strategic focus should be on implementing HTTPS, improving page performance, and adopting security best practices.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
0/ 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

7 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 X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

    • 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 santa.lv

This scan found 24 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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Full report

€39.90one-time

  • The complete analysis as a PDF you can cite
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Prices incl. 21% VAT. Secure checkout by Mollie; sold by SEQ SIA, Latvia.

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
90
Security headers
30
Email security
75
DNS health
65
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
0
Average
60

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

Santa.lv operates as a major Latvian lifestyle media portal with a diversified content offering and a subscription service. Its market positioning as the largest lifestyle portal in Latvia gives it competitive advantages in audience reach and advertising revenue. The business model combines free content monetized by ads and premium subscription content, targeting a broad demographic interested in lifestyle, health, and entertainment. The company leverages partnerships with advertising networks like Google AdManager and tracking services such as Gemius and Facebook Pixel. The presence of multiple authors and thematic categories indicates a mature editorial operation. The domain registration is transparent and consistent with the business claims, supporting legitimacy. Growth indicators include active content updates and a large volume of articles. Strategic observations suggest opportunities to enhance user engagement through improved security and faster performance, which could increase subscription conversions and ad revenue. The partnership ecosystem includes advertising and analytics providers but no detected subsidiaries or parent companies.

Security posture

The current security posture of Santa.lv is weak due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and lack of HTTPS support, which is a critical vulnerability impacting all users. No modern TLS protocols are enabled, and no security headers such as HSTS or Content Security Policy are present. DNS security features like DNSSEC and CAA records are not implemented, increasing risk of DNS spoofing or unauthorized certificate issuance. No explicit security or incident response policies are found on the website, and no dedicated security contact channels exist. The site uses multiple third-party scripts and advertising technologies, which may increase the attack surface if not properly managed. Privacy policies are present and GDPR compliant, indicating some level of data protection awareness. Overall, the site is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and lacks defense-in-depth security controls. Immediate remediation is required to install SSL/TLS certificates, enable HTTPS, and implement security headers. Establishing incident response procedures and security policies would further strengthen the security culture.

Recommendations

  1. Install and maintain a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire site.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and disable all insecure protocols.
  3. Implement security headers including HSTS, Content Security Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  4. Enable DNSSEC and configure CAA records to protect DNS integrity and certificate issuance.
  5. Establish a published security policy and incident response contact channels (e.g., security@ or abuse@ emails).
  6. Optimize website performance to reduce page load times and improve user experience.
  7. Conduct regular security audits of third-party scripts and advertising technologies to minimize risk.
  8. Enhance accessibility features and SEO optimization for broader audience reach.
  9. Enable domain protection locks to prevent unauthorized domain transfers.
  10. Increase transparency and trust signals by publishing certifications or compliance attestations.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a custom or proprietary CMS with a modern front-end including jQuery and Slick Carousel for UI components. It integrates multiple third-party services such as Google Tag Manager, Facebook SDK, Gemius analytics, and Google AdManager for advertising. Hosting and DNS are managed via Cloudflare, providing CDN and DNS services. However, the SSL certificate is invalid or missing, and no TLS protocols are enabled, which is a critical technical flaw. The site has a large page size (~1.4MB) and slow load time (~21 seconds), indicating potential optimization issues. Meta tags and Open Graph data are well implemented for SEO and social sharing. Mobile optimization is good with responsive design and mobile menus. Accessibility is basic but could be improved. There is no evidence of modern frameworks like React or Angular; the stack is mostly traditional web technologies. Technical risks include the lack of HTTPS, missing security headers, and potential performance bottlenecks that could impact user retention and SEO rankings.
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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