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Security report for vastuullinentiede.fi

Tieteellisten seurain valtuuskunta (TSV) · Education · Finland

High risk. 6 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and Security headers.

Security score

46/100

Risk levelHigh

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

Vastuullinentiede.fi is a Finnish government-supported platform dedicated to promoting responsible science, research ethics, and open science within the Finnish research community. It serves as a coordination and informational hub linking several authoritative Finnish scientific and ethical organizations. The website targets researchers, academic institutions, and policymakers, providing articles, events, and guidelines to foster responsible research practices. Technically, the site is built on Drupal 9 with responsive design and uses Matomo for analytics with cookies disabled, reflecting a moderate level of digital maturity. However, the site suffers from a lack of a valid SSL certificate, resulting in no HTTPS support, which significantly impacts its security posture. No privacy or cookie policies were found, and security headers are absent, indicating gaps in compliance and security best practices. Overall, the site is professionally presented with good content relevance and navigation but requires urgent improvements in security and privacy compliance to enhance trust and protect users.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
15/ 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

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 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 vastuullinentiede.fi

This scan found 17 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

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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
50
Security headers
35
Email security
50
DNS health
85
Network security
40
GDPR outside view
15
Average
46

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

The website operates as a non-profit, government-backed platform focused on education and research ethics in Finland. It collaborates closely with partner organizations such as Avoin tiede, Tiedonjulkistamisen neuvottelukunta, Tutkimuseettinen neuvottelukunta, and Julkaisufoorumi, forming a network that supports responsible research practices. The business model centers on information dissemination, coordination of open science initiatives, and hosting events and publications. The platform's market position is authoritative within the Finnish scientific community, supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The target audience includes researchers, academic institutions, and policymakers. The site’s content quality and branding are consistent and professional, reinforcing its credibility. However, the absence of direct contact emails or phone numbers and missing privacy policies may limit user engagement and trust.

Security posture

The security posture of vastuullinentiede.fi is currently weak due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate, resulting in no HTTPS encryption. This exposes users to potential data interception risks. Additionally, the site lacks essential security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options, which could mitigate common web attacks. While no known SSL vulnerabilities or subdomain takeover risks were detected, the lack of HSTS and OCSP stapling further weakens the security stance. The site uses Matomo analytics with cookies disabled, which is positive for privacy but does not compensate for the fundamental lack of HTTPS. No incident response or security policy information is publicly available, indicating potential gaps in security governance. Immediate remediation of SSL and security headers is recommended to improve the security posture and user trust.

Recommendations

  1. Obtain and properly configure a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire site.
  2. Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with includeSubDomains and preload directives.
  3. Add essential security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Referrer-Policy.
  4. Publish clear privacy and cookie policies to comply with GDPR and enhance transparency.
  5. Provide explicit contact information including company emails and phone numbers to improve user trust and engagement.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Drupal 9 CMS, leveraging responsive design techniques and modern HTML5 elements such as the picture element for images. It uses Matomo analytics with cookies disabled, indicating a privacy-conscious approach to user tracking. The site is hosted on IP 195.148.72.18 with nameservers ns.tsv.fi and ns2.tsv.fi, suggesting hosting by a Finnish scientific organization. Performance is suboptimal with a load time exceeding 14 seconds and a relatively large page size, indicating potential for optimization. No advanced JavaScript frameworks or CDN usage was detected. The absence of valid SSL and security headers represents a significant technical debt and security risk. Accessibility features are basic, and SEO optimization is minimal but present through meta tags and Open Graph data. Overall, the technical infrastructure is functional but requires modernization and security enhancements to meet current web standards.
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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