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Security report for vatican.va

Vatican · Government · Vatican City

Medium risk. 5 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

58/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The Vatican's official website serves as the primary digital presence for the sovereign entity and religious institution. It provides multilingual content and official communications primarily through localized pages. The site is built on Adobe Experience Manager and hosted on Microsoft Azure, utilizing Google Tag Manager for analytics. However, the landing page content is minimal, mainly redirecting users based on browser language. Security posture is weak due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and lack of HTTPS support, despite some security headers being present. Privacy and cookie policies are missing, indicating compliance gaps. Overall, the site demonstrates basic technical infrastructure but requires significant improvements in security and privacy compliance to meet modern standards.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of vatican.va. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
25/ 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

5 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 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. GDPR outside view

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

    • 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

    • 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

    • High

      Third-party services without privacy policy

      Detected services: Google Analytics

      What to do: Document all third-party data sharing in your privacy policy

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

Keep watching vatican.va

This scan found 18 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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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
60
Email security
60
DNS health
50
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
25
Average
58

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 vatican.va, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
342
Employees
0
Customers
301
Third parties
41
Weak passwords
21%

11 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 vatican.va.

Select it in the checkout above.

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

Technical appendix

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

Business context

Business profile

The Vatican operates as a unique governmental and religious institution with a global audience. Its website targets Catholics and the general public seeking official information. The business model is non-commercial, focusing on information dissemination and cultural/religious outreach. The site’s market position is authoritative within its niche, but digital maturity is basic. The use of Adobe Experience Manager suggests investment in enterprise-grade CMS technology, yet the lack of SSL and privacy policies indicates gaps in digital governance. No evident partnerships or subsidiaries are linked through the website. The Vatican’s digital presence is consistent with its institutional nature but lacks modern web best practices.

Security posture

Security maturity is low due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and disabled TLS protocols, which critically undermines secure communications. While some security headers are implemented, the lack of DNSSEC, CAA records, and OCSP stapling further weakens the security posture. No incident response or security policy information is provided, and no vulnerability disclosure mechanisms are evident. The use of Google Tag Manager introduces moderate tracking but without visible privacy controls. These factors collectively expose the site to risks such as data interception and reduced user trust. Immediate remediation of SSL/TLS and privacy compliance is recommended.

Recommendations

  1. Obtain and deploy a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS and secure user connections.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 or 1.3) and configure strong cipher suites to enhance encryption.
  3. Publish comprehensive privacy and cookie policies with explicit GDPR compliance statements.
  4. Implement a cookie consent mechanism to inform users and obtain consent for tracking.
  5. Add clear contact information including security incident response contacts and data protection officer details.
  6. Enable DNSSEC and CAA records to strengthen DNS security and certificate issuance control.
  7. Improve website content richness on the landing page to enhance user experience and SEO.
  8. Review and optimize performance and accessibility to improve overall technical quality.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Adobe Experience Manager, indicating a robust CMS platform. It uses jQuery libraries and Google Tag Manager for analytics. Hosting is on Microsoft Azure, which is a reliable cloud provider. However, the site lacks a valid SSL certificate and does not support any TLS protocols, which is a critical technical deficiency. Performance metrics are missing, but the page size and resource count are zero, indicating minimal content and likely slow user experience due to redirects. SEO metadata is minimal with empty description and keywords. Accessibility and mobile optimization are basic, with no advanced features detected. The site uses standard security headers but lacks advanced security configurations. Overall, the technical implementation is functional but outdated and incomplete.
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

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 73/100 −3Medium30 findingsView report
  2. 76/100 +28Low27 findingsView report
  3. 48/100High25 findingsView report
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