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Security report for skillnetireland.ie

Skillnet Ireland · Government · Ireland

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in Security headers and SSL/TLS.

Security score

75/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Skillnet Ireland is the national talent development agency of Ireland, operating as a government-affiliated organization focused on enhancing business competitiveness through skills development. The agency partners with companies of all sizes to provide upskilling programs and business supports, positioning itself as a key player in Ireland's workforce development landscape. The website reflects this mission with clear branding and content targeted at businesses seeking talent development solutions. Technically, the website employs a modern technology stack including Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, and Cookiebot for cookie consent management. The site is well-optimized for mobile devices and demonstrates good SEO and accessibility practices. Performance is moderate, with room for improvement in hosting and technical infrastructure transparency. From a security perspective, the site uses HTTPS and implements a detailed cookie consent mechanism with granular user controls, indicating a strong privacy posture. However, explicit security headers and published security policies are absent, and no incident response or vulnerability disclosure information is provided. The lack of WHOIS data limits domain registration trust analysis, but the overall legitimacy is supported by government affiliation and consistent branding. Overall, Skillnet Ireland's website is professional, secure, and privacy-conscious, serving its business audience effectively. Strategic recommendations include enhancing security headers, publishing security and privacy policies, and providing clear contact information for incident response and data protection inquiries.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
95/ 100 · Low
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. 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';…

  2. 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
    • High

      Weak SSL Key Length

      SSL certificate uses 256-bit key, which is considered weak

      What to do: Use at least 2048-bit RSA or 256-bit ECC key

      • CWE-326
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • Mozilla TLS: Mozilla Server Side TLS 6.0 intermediate: rsa_key_size 2048

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

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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
52
Security headers
50
Email security
85
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
95
Average
75

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

Skillnet Ireland operates as a government agency dedicated to workforce development and business support in Ireland. Its market positioning as a national talent development agency gives it a competitive advantage in accessing public funding and industry partnerships. The business model revolves around providing training programs and upskilling services to companies, generating value through improved workforce capabilities. Revenue streams likely include government funding and possibly program fees. Target customers are businesses across sectors seeking to enhance employee skills. The partnership ecosystem includes major technology and marketing platforms, enhancing outreach and analytics capabilities. Growth indicators include active cookie consent management and integration of multiple marketing tools. The agency's operations reflect a strategic focus on digital maturity and compliance with privacy regulations.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with mandatory HTTPS encryption and a comprehensive cookie consent mechanism that aligns with GDPR requirements. The use of CSRF tokens and session cookies indicates attention to session security. However, the absence of explicit security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security represents an area for improvement. No direct evidence of vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data was found. The lack of published security policies, incident response contacts, or vulnerability disclosure mechanisms suggests limited transparency in security governance. Overall, the security maturity is good but could be enhanced by formalizing policies and improving header configurations.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and enforce security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security to strengthen browser security.
  2. Publish a clear security policy and incident response contact information on the website to improve transparency and trust.
  3. Establish and publicize a vulnerability disclosure program, ideally via a security.txt file, to encourage responsible reporting of security issues.
  4. Enhance privacy compliance by publishing a comprehensive privacy policy and terms of service documents accessible from the homepage.
  5. Provide clear company contact information including emails and phone numbers for support and data protection inquiries to improve business credibility.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Skillnet Ireland
Description
Skillnet Ireland is the national talent development agency of Ireland. In partnership with industry, we offer upskilling programmes and business supports to companies of all sizes.
Key services
Upskilling programmes, Business supports
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, Cookiebot, Cloudflare (implied by cookies), Picturefill
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enabled
  • Cookie consent banner with granular controls
  • Use of CSRF token cookie

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Microsoft Application Insights, Hotjar
Tracking level
extensive
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Ad networks
Google DoubleClick, Facebook Pixel
Tracking pixels
Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, Twitter tracking
Marketing tools
Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, Hotjar
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is fully accessible with no blocking or WAF challenge
  2. Comprehensive cookie consent mechanism implemented with detailed cookie categories
  3. No explicit privacy policy or terms of service found in the provided content
  4. No direct contact emails or phone numbers found in the HTML content
  5. Use of multiple third-party analytics and marketing tools with transparent cookie declarations
  6. Strong branding and consistent design aligned with a government agency
  7. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information found
  8. No explicit security policy or incident response contact information found
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern and widely adopted technology stack including Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, and Cookiebot for consent management. The presence of picturefill indicates support for responsive images and legacy browser compatibility. The site is mobile optimized and includes accessibility features such as skip links and ARIA roles. Performance is moderate with asynchronous loading of scripts. Hosting provider details are not explicit, but Cloudflare-related cookies suggest CDN usage. Technical debt appears low, but opportunities exist to improve security headers and provide more transparency on hosting and CMS platforms.
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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