Visual Journal is a niche design blog operated by Alessandro Scarpellini, focusing on curated branding and graphic design projects globally. The website serves a specialized audience of designers and studios seeking inspiration and exposure. The business model is content curation without advertising, relying on voluntary contributions and community engagement via social media and email submissions. Technically, the site uses standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript libraries for infinite scrolling and lazy loading, delivering a moderate performance with good mobile optimization and SEO practices. Security posture is basic with HTTPS enabled but lacks advanced security headers and DNSSEC, and no privacy or cookie policies are present, indicating compliance gaps. Overall, the site is professional and trustworthy but would benefit from enhanced security and privacy measures.
a(a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
b(b) Incident handling: One indicator
c(c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
d(d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
e(e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
f(f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
g(g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
h(h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
i(i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
j(j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside
Partly checked
One indicator
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
8 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.
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
SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop others sending email that looks like it comes from your domain, a common route to phishing and invoice fraud.
Critical
No email authentication configured
Domain is vulnerable to email spoofing
What to do: Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC immediately
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
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.
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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
Email alerts on material changes and an exportable JSON history of every change.
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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
75
Email security
60
DNS health
60
Network security
40
GDPR outside view
10
Average
52
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 visualjournal.it, from OffSeq Breach.
No leaked records found
Breach holds no records for visualjournal.it right now. New leaks arrive continuously, so monitoring on Breach alerts you if that changes.
Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.
Business context
Business profile
The website occupies a niche media sector focused on design inspiration and curation. Its competitive advantage lies in high-quality, personally curated content and independence from advertising. Revenue streams appear limited to voluntary contributions via Buy Me A Coffee. The target customers are design professionals and studios worldwide. The site has a small scale operation with a clear founder identity and consistent branding. Partnerships are limited to social media platforms and no direct business partners or subsidiaries are identified. Growth potential depends on content quality and community engagement. Strategic observations include the need for formalized privacy and security policies to enhance trust and compliance.
Security posture
The current security maturity is basic. HTTPS is implemented, but the absence of DNSSEC and security headers reduces protection against DNS attacks and common web vulnerabilities. No incident response or security policies are published, and no vulnerability disclosure or security.txt files are present. Data protection practices are minimal with no privacy or cookie policies, which may expose the site to GDPR compliance risks. The site does not appear to collect user data via forms or analytics, reducing exposure but also limiting user insights. Overall, the security culture appears informal and could be improved with documented policies and technical enhancements.
Recommendations
Enable DNSSEC on the domain to improve DNS security and integrity.
Implement key security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to mitigate common web attacks.
Publish a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie policy to address GDPR and user transparency requirements.
Consider adding a security policy and incident response contact to improve trust and preparedness.
Regularly review and update technical stack and security measures to maintain a strong security posture.
Site observations
Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.
Business
Company
Visual Journal
Description
Visual Journal is a blog showcasing curated branding and graphic design projects worldwide, managed by Alessandro Scarpellini, an Italian art director and design manager specializing in strategy, branding, and visual communication.
Key services
Curated design project showcases, Design inspiration and research, Community engagement via social media and email submissions
No privacy or cookie policy found, which is a compliance gap.
No terms of service or security policy present.
Contact information limited to a single email address; no phone or physical address found.
No forms detected on the homepage; contact is via mailto link only.
No analytics or tracking scripts detected in provided HTML.
No advertising or affiliate marketing detected; site is ad-free by design.
Social media presence is strong with Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn links.
Site uses HTTPS but lacks advanced security headers and DNSSEC.
Content is professionally curated and well presented with good SEO meta tags.
No JSON-LD structured data found in the HTML.
Technical notes
Notes
The website uses a clean, modern HTML5 structure with CSS and JavaScript for enhanced user experience features like infinite scrolling and lazy loading images. The meta tags are well implemented for SEO and social sharing with Open Graph and Twitter Card tags. No CMS or hosting provider is explicitly identified. Performance is moderate with good mobile responsiveness. Accessibility is basic but could be improved with ARIA roles and semantic enhancements. No analytics or tracking scripts were detected, indicating minimal user data collection. The lack of security headers and DNSSEC represents technical debt and potential risk. Overall, the technical implementation supports the business goals but has room for modernization and security improvements.
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.
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