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Security report for unipa.it

Università degli Studi di Palermo · Education · Italy

Medium risk. 6 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, Security headers and 1 other check.

Security score

68/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The Università degli Studi di Palermo is a large, well-established public university in Italy, founded in 1806, serving over 40,000 students. It offers a broad range of academic programs including undergraduate, graduate, and single-cycle degrees. The website reflects its educational mission with content focused on academic offerings and institutional information. Technically, the site uses standard web technologies such as Bootstrap and FontAwesome, providing a good user experience with responsive design and clear navigation. However, there is a lack of visible privacy and cookie policies, as well as security and incident response information, which are critical for compliance and trust in today's digital environment. The security posture is moderate but could be improved by implementing security headers and disclosing vulnerability handling procedures. Overall, the domain registration data aligns well with the university's identity, indicating high legitimacy and trustworthiness.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
28/ 100 · High
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

6 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 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

  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';…

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Keep watching unipa.it

This scan found 22 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
67
Security headers
50
Email security
85
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
28
Average
68

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

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention unipa.it, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
25,251
Employees
190
Customers
19,815
Third parties
5,246
Weak passwords
7%

Latest record dated 2026-06-17 · 114 subdomains affected

See the 10 newest leaked credentials

A one-off add-on to this report that lists the most recent identifier and password pairs OffSeq Breach holds for unipa.it.

Select it in the checkout above.

Masked preview

  • –idp.unipa.it2026-06-17
  • –a3.unipa.it2026-06-13
  • –sts.unipa.it2026-06-06
  • –a3.unipa.it2026-06-06
  • –idp.unipa.it2026-05-28

Breach keeps ingesting new leaks, so these numbers can grow between scans.

Open in Breach(opens in a new tab)Monitor on Breach(opens in a new tab)

Technical appendix

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

Business context

Business profile

The university holds a strong market position as one of Italy's mega universities with a large student body and a long history. Its business model is focused on public higher education and research services, targeting students, academics, and researchers. The website serves as an institutional portal rather than a commercial platform, with no evident advertising or monetization mechanisms. The lack of detailed contact information and policies on the homepage suggests potential areas for improvement in stakeholder engagement and compliance transparency. The presence of official social media links supports outreach and communication efforts.

Security posture

The website currently lacks visible security headers and explicit security policies, which are important for protecting users and data. There is no evidence of a vulnerability disclosure program or incident response contact channels, which could hinder timely handling of security issues. The SSL configuration status is unknown from the provided data, but HTTPS is implied by the URL. The absence of privacy and cookie policies indicates potential GDPR compliance gaps. Strengthening these areas would enhance the university's security maturity and user trust.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie consent mechanism to ensure GDPR compliance.
  2. Add security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-XSS-Protection to improve security posture.
  3. Establish and disclose a vulnerability disclosure program and incident response contact information.
  4. Enhance accessibility features to meet modern standards and improve user experience for all visitors.
  5. Regularly audit and update technical infrastructure to maintain performance and security.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Università degli Studi di Palermo
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Università degli Studi di Palermo
Description
L'Università degli Studi di Palermo, fondata nel 1806, con i suoi oltre 40000 iscritti è uno degli 11 mega Atenei italiani. La sua offerta formativa comprende più di 130 corsi di studio, tra lauree triennali, magistrali e magistrali a ciclo unico
Key services
undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, single-cycle degrees, academic research
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Bootstrap CSS, FontAwesome, Material Icons, Google Fonts
Frameworks
Bootstrap
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
40/100

Analytics and tracking

Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Transparency
poor

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a large, established Italian university site.
  2. Content is primarily educational and institutional.
  3. No privacy or cookie policies found on the homepage HTML.
  4. No visible contact emails or phone numbers in the provided HTML snippet.
  5. No security or incident response policies detected.
  6. No vulnerability disclosure or security.txt found.
  7. Uses standard web technologies like Bootstrap and FontAwesome.
  8. No advertising or tracking scripts detected in the provided content.
  9. No signs of WAF or content blocking.
  10. WHOIS data consistent with university identity.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses Bootstrap framework along with FontAwesome and Material Icons for UI elements, indicating a modern and responsive design approach. The presence of Google Fonts enhances typography. The site appears to be moderately performant with basic SEO optimizations such as meta tags and Open Graph data. However, there is no detected CMS or advanced platform, suggesting a custom or static site architecture. Hosting provider details are not evident. There is room for improvement in accessibility and security configurations to reduce technical debt and risks.
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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