Uptime Report Research · Original scan, 11 November 2026

Government Website Security 2026: 45% of State and Local .gov Sites Meet the Federal HSTS Bar, vs 91% of Federal

Government website security, measured: as of 11 November 2026, we scanned the homepage of every state, county and city domain on CISA’s .gov list (14,172 domains) plus 1,320 federal domains. Of 9,196 working state and local websites, 86% redirect to HTTPS, but only 45% meet a one-year HSTS policy or preload, against 91% of federal sites.

9,196working state, county and city .gov homepages scanned
86%redirect HTTP to HTTPS (federal 90%)
45%meet the one-year HSTS or preload bar (federal 91%)
18%still accept TLS 1.0 or 1.1 (federal 5%)

Key findings

  1. Of 14,172 state, county and city .gov domains on CISA’s list, 12,311 resolve in DNS and 9,196 returned a working homepage to a single scripted request.
  2. 86% of those state and local websites redirect plain HTTP to HTTPS, against 90% of 796 federal websites.
  3. Only 45% meet the federal-style HSTS bar (a Strict-Transport-Security max-age of at least one year, or a browser-preloaded domain), against 91% of federal websites.
  4. 18% of state and local hosts that completed a TLS handshake still accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.1, which RFC 8996 says MUST NOT be used; for federal hosts the figure is 5%.
  5. 37% send a Content-Security-Policy header, 55% send X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff and 38% send a Referrer-Policy; only 11% pass all six of our HTTPS and header checks.
  6. Washington has the highest average web hygiene score (79.1 of 100) among 49 states with at least 15 scanned sites, and Michigan the lowest (60.2).
  7. 44% of state and local homepages carry a CDN or edge provider’s headers, most often Cloudflare (3,081 sites), and 1,244 of the 1,980 hosts that still accept TLS 1.0 or 1.1 sit behind Cloudflare, whose documented default is TLS 1.0.

Free to cite and republish with a link to this page. Results are aggregates; we do not publish results for individual websites.

State web hygiene scores

Each working homepage gets a score out of 100 from seven passive checks, and a state’s score is the plain average across all of its state agency, county and city .gov homepages. Washington, Massachusetts and Connecticut lead; Michigan, Kentucky and Delaware trail. States with fewer than 15 working sites are shown but not ranked.

Alaska: hygiene score 66.8 (rank 28 of 49), 22 websites scannedAK67Maine: hygiene score 70.1 (rank 16 of 49), 101 websites scannedME70Wisconsin: hygiene score 62.1 (rank 45 of 49), 586 websites scannedWI62Vermont: hygiene score 68.3 (rank 24 of 49), 70 websites scannedVT68New Hampshire: hygiene score 70.9 (rank 15 of 49), 140 websites scannedNH71Washington: hygiene score 79.1 (rank 1 of 49), 134 websites scannedWA79Idaho: hygiene score 69.1 (rank 19 of 49), 46 websites scannedID69Montana: hygiene score 65.7 (rank 35 of 49), 87 websites scannedMT66North Dakota: hygiene score 70.0 (rank 18 of 49), 45 websites scannedND70Minnesota: hygiene score 66.4 (rank 31 of 49), 453 websites scannedMN66Illinois: hygiene score 66.7 (rank 29 of 49), 265 websites scannedIL67Michigan: hygiene score 60.2 (rank 49 of 49), 411 websites scannedMI60New York: hygiene score 63.3 (rank 39 of 49), 993 websites scannedNY63Massachusetts: hygiene score 77.0 (rank 2 of 49), 255 websites scannedMA77Oregon: hygiene score 74.6 (rank 7 of 49), 128 websites scannedOR75Nevada: hygiene score 68.9 (rank 22 of 49), 32 websites scannedNV69Wyoming: hygiene score 72.1 (rank 12 of 49), 47 websites scannedWY72South Dakota: hygiene score 66.4 (rank 33 of 49), 48 websites scannedSD66Iowa: hygiene score 69.0 (rank 21 of 49), 145 websites scannedIA69Indiana: hygiene score 63.1 (rank 40 of 49), 94 websites scannedIN63Ohio: hygiene score 65.3 (rank 37 of 49), 391 websites scannedOH65Pennsylvania: hygiene score 62.2 (rank 44 of 49), 259 websites scannedPA62New Jersey: hygiene score 64.8 (rank 38 of 49), 206 websites scannedNJ65Connecticut: hygiene score 76.9 (rank 3 of 49), 116 websites scannedCT77Rhode Island: hygiene score 72.2 (rank 11 of 49), 40 websites scannedRI72California: hygiene score 74.4 (rank 8 of 49), 323 websites scannedCA74Utah: hygiene score 67.3 (rank 27 of 49), 209 websites scannedUT67Colorado: hygiene score 76.4 (rank 4 of 49), 139 websites scannedCO76Nebraska: hygiene score 68.1 (rank 25 of 49), 81 websites scannedNE68Missouri: hygiene score 66.1 (rank 34 of 49), 215 websites scannedMO66Kentucky: hygiene score 61.6 (rank 48 of 49), 137 websites scannedKY62West Virginia: hygiene score 63.0 (rank 42 of 49), 94 websites scannedWV63Virginia: hygiene score 72.7 (rank 10 of 49), 149 websites scannedVA73Maryland: hygiene score 73.3 (rank 9 of 49), 87 websites scannedMD73Delaware: hygiene score 61.9 (rank 47 of 49), 16 websites scannedDE62Arizona: hygiene score 75.3 (rank 5 of 49), 112 websites scannedAZ75New Mexico: hygiene score 66.4 (rank 30 of 49), 69 websites scannedNM66Kansas: hygiene score 68.6 (rank 23 of 49), 153 websites scannedKS69Arkansas: hygiene score 62.2 (rank 43 of 49), 232 websites scannedAR62Tennessee: hygiene score 66.4 (rank 32 of 49), 219 websites scannedTN66North Carolina: hygiene score 71.3 (rank 14 of 49), 241 websites scannedNC71South Carolina: hygiene score 69.0 (rank 20 of 49), 83 websites scannedSC69District of Columbia: only 7 websites scanned, not scoredDCn=7Oklahoma: hygiene score 67.8 (rank 26 of 49), 138 websites scannedOK68Louisiana: hygiene score 65.7 (rank 36 of 49), 72 websites scannedLA66Mississippi: hygiene score 61.9 (rank 46 of 49), 71 websites scannedMS62Alabama: hygiene score 63.1 (rank 41 of 49), 165 websites scannedAL63Georgia: hygiene score 70.1 (rank 17 of 49), 235 websites scannedGA70Hawaii: only 10 websites scanned, not scoredHIn=10Texas: hygiene score 75.1 (rank 6 of 49), 470 websites scannedTX75Florida: hygiene score 71.8 (rank 13 of 49), 338 websites scannedFL72score 6079

Darker tiles score higher. Hover a tile for the score, rank and number of websites. Dashed tiles had fewer than 15 working .gov homepages in the scan.

The formula. Web hygiene score = sum of points earned, per homepage, then averaged per state:

  • 20 points: HTTPS with a valid certificate
  • 20 points: HTTP redirects to HTTPS
  • 15 points: HSTS max-age of at least one year, or domain preloaded
  • 15 points: TLS 1.0 and 1.1 refused
  • 10 points: Content-Security-Policy header
  • 10 points: X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
  • 10 points: Referrer-Policy header

A site with every check passing scores 100. State and local average: 67.6. Federal average on the same formula: 80.8.

Every state, sortable

Click a column header to sort. Percentages are shares of each state’s working state, county and city .gov homepages, except the TLS 1.0/1.1 column, which is a share of hosts that completed a TLS handshake.

Rank State Sites Score Valid HTTPS HTTP to HTTPS HSTS 1 yr or preload Accepts TLS 1.0/1.1 CSP nosniff Referrer-Policy CDN seen
1 Washington 134 79.1 99% 93% 40% 10% 64% 80% 68% 38%
2 Massachusetts 255 77.0 96% 89% 25% 9% 72% 83% 74% 29%
3 Connecticut 116 76.9 94% 94% 37% 11% 62% 80% 67% 46%
4 Colorado 139 76.4 98% 89% 59% 13% 50% 65% 55% 49%
5 Arizona 112 75.3 89% 90% 55% 9% 57% 73% 56% 66%
6 Texas 470 75.1 92% 86% 45% 11% 61% 75% 65% 35%
7 Oregon 128 74.6 95% 88% 58% 12% 55% 73% 45% 36%
8 California 323 74.4 93% 84% 45% 14% 60% 75% 63% 42%
9 Maryland 87 73.3 97% 92% 43% 13% 46% 70% 54% 45%
10 Virginia 149 72.7 91% 86% 32% 10% 60% 78% 63% 40%
11 Rhode Island 40 72.2 98% 78% 48% 17% 48% 68% 55% 35%
12 Wyoming 47 72.1 85% 89% 55% 10% 53% 70% 51% 45%
13 Florida 338 71.8 92% 88% 51% 18% 51% 65% 49% 51%
14 North Carolina 241 71.3 97% 85% 51% 17% 44% 66% 39% 48%
15 New Hampshire 140 70.9 95% 84% 39% 10% 53% 57% 51% 38%
16 Maine 101 70.1 95% 87% 43% 10% 45% 63% 41% 43%
17 Georgia 235 70.1 96% 85% 43% 10% 40% 58% 45% 34%
18 North Dakota 45 70.0 93% 93% 51% 10% 24% 71% 31% 20%
19 Idaho 46 69.1 98% 85% 59% 22% 35% 52% 37% 65%
20 South Carolina 83 69.0 99% 86% 49% 18% 29% 53% 42% 47%
21 Iowa 145 69.0 93% 91% 48% 22% 48% 59% 24% 46%
22 Nevada 32 68.9 94% 91% 53% 12% 25% 56% 38% 59%
23 Kansas 153 68.6 93% 80% 41% 21% 42% 67% 51% 48%
24 Vermont 70 68.3 96% 94% 53% 24% 30% 56% 24% 41%
25 Nebraska 81 68.1 98% 75% 70% 7% 26% 43% 26% 42%
26 Oklahoma 138 67.8 98% 75% 49% 15% 35% 60% 38% 40%
27 Utah 209 67.3 98% 90% 46% 22% 29% 51% 37% 59%
28 Alaska 22 66.8 91% 86% 36% 19% 41% 68% 41% 59%
29 Illinois 265 66.7 97% 80% 55% 17% 29% 47% 32% 40%
30 New Mexico 69 66.4 97% 71% 41% 14% 38% 59% 42% 42%
31 Minnesota 453 66.4 96% 89% 35% 16% 30% 54% 37% 38%
32 Tennessee 219 66.4 96% 85% 42% 12% 33% 49% 30% 37%
33 South Dakota 48 66.4 98% 83% 42% 32% 46% 50% 46% 44%
34 Missouri 215 66.1 95% 80% 51% 16% 32% 47% 33% 39%
35 Montana 87 65.7 93% 86% 46% 22% 24% 54% 34% 33%
36 Louisiana 72 65.7 96% 82% 56% 25% 28% 49% 33% 58%
37 Ohio 391 65.3 96% 87% 40% 23% 30% 52% 31% 43%
38 New Jersey 206 64.8 95% 89% 34% 12% 33% 42% 32% 50%
39 New York 993 63.3 97% 88% 28% 15% 26% 45% 27% 51%
40 Indiana 94 63.1 90% 87% 48% 24% 22% 51% 22% 36%
41 Alabama 165 63.1 90% 81% 45% 14% 25% 47% 30% 40%
42 West Virginia 94 63.0 91% 85% 55% 20% 17% 43% 19% 36%
43 Arkansas 232 62.2 96% 78% 44% 22% 23% 46% 28% 45%
44 Pennsylvania 259 62.2 92% 79% 45% 12% 24% 41% 27% 30%
45 Wisconsin 586 62.1 95% 85% 67% 33% 19% 33% 17% 50%
46 Mississippi 71 61.9 93% 70% 51% 12% 24% 48% 24% 31%
47 Delaware 16 61.9 94% 88% 25% 24% 44% 44% 38% 25%
48 Kentucky 137 61.6 94% 78% 50% 17% 19% 44% 22% 40%
49 Michigan 411 60.2 97% 91% 46% 40% 21% 30% 23% 54%
n/a District of Columbia 7 56.4 100% 86% 14% 12% 14% 29% 0% 71%
n/a Hawaii 10 55.5 90% 80% 40% 42% 30% 30% 20% 80%

Federal vs state vs local

Federal executive agencies have been under Binding Operational Directive 18-01 since 16 October 2017, which requires HTTPS-only service with HSTS, and OMB memo M-22-09 (26 January 2022) told agencies to preload their .gov domains. No equivalent mandate covers state, county or city sites, and the measurements follow that line. Valid HTTPS is common at every level, from 88% of state-agency sites to 97% of federal ones; HSTS is where federal sites pull away, by 46 percentage points on the one-year HSTS check. Automatic preloading of new .gov domains is quietly closing part of the gap: 1,672 working state and local sites send no HSTS header at all but are protected anyway because their domain is on the browser preload list, which is why counties (54%) beat state agencies (49%) on this check.

FederalStateCountyCityHTTP redirects to HTTPSFederal: 90.1% of 796 websites90%State: 89.3% of 730 websites89%County: 82.1% of 1,770 websites82%City: 86.2% of 6,696 websites86%HSTS 1 year or preloadedFederal: 91.1% of 796 websites91%State: 49.0% of 730 websites49%County: 54.2% of 1,770 websites54%City: 41.6% of 6,696 websites42%Domain HSTS preloadedFederal: 62.7% of 796 websites63%State: 17.7% of 730 websites18%County: 38.3% of 1,770 websites38%City: 25.0% of 6,696 websites25%TLS 1.0 and 1.1 refusedFederal: 92.2% of 796 websites92%State: 77.7% of 730 websites78%County: 79.4% of 1,770 websites79%City: 78.8% of 6,696 websites79%Content-Security-PolicyFederal: 41.8% of 796 websites42%State: 27.3% of 730 websites27%County: 39.0% of 1,770 websites39%City: 37.1% of 6,696 websites37%X-Content-Type-OptionsFederal: 81.3% of 796 websites81%State: 55.2% of 730 websites55%County: 56.3% of 1,770 websites56%City: 54.3% of 6,696 websites54%Referrer-PolicyFederal: 35.7% of 796 websites36%State: 18.2% of 730 websites18%County: 39.6% of 1,770 websites40%City: 40.2% of 6,696 websites40%

Share of working homepages passing each check, by the domain type CISA records. Federal includes executive, legislative and judicial domains.

Type Domains listed Resolve Working sites Valid HTTPS HTTP to HTTPS HSTS sent HSTS 1 yr or preload Preloaded TLS 1.3 Accepts TLS 1.0/1.1 CSP nosniff Referrer-Policy Score
Federal 1,320 1,125 796 97% 90% 91% 91% 63% 79% 5% 42% 81% 36% 80.8
State 1,488 1,245 730 88% 89% 49% 49% 18% 81% 13% 27% 55% 18% 64.6
County 3,065 2,592 1,770 94% 82% 33% 54% 38% 78% 18% 39% 56% 40% 68.9
City 9,619 8,474 6,696 96% 86% 31% 42% 25% 75% 18% 37% 54% 40% 67.6
50 state portals 50 50 35 91% 91% 71% 57% 3% 70% 17% 20% 66% 26% 67.4

Timeline: the rules behind the gap

Date Event Applies to
May 2017 .gov registry begins automatically preloading new federal executive branch domains New federal executive domains
16 Oct 2017 CISA (then DHS) issues BOD 18-01: HTTPS-only with HSTS, SSLv2, SSLv3, 3DES and RC4 disabled, within 120 days Federal executive agencies
Aug 2018 Other newly registered .gov domains may opt in to preloading New state, local and other .gov domains
1 Sep 2020 All newly registered .gov domains are preloaded automatically Every new .gov domain
Mar 2021 RFC 8996: TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 MUST NOT be used Internet standard
21 Jun 2021 .gov program announces its intent to preload the whole .gov top-level domain (not yet done) All .gov domains, eventually
26 Jan 2022 OMB M-22-09 tells agencies to work with CISA to preload their .gov domains Federal agencies
21 Oct 2026 PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 fix CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 Any site running PHP
11 November 2026 This scan: 14,172 state and local and 1,320 federal .gov domains Refreshed with each update of this page

The 50 state portals (one primary .gov portal domain per state, such as ca.gov or texas.gov) score 67.4 on average, above the 64.6 average for all 730 working state-government websites. 35 of the 50 returned a working homepage to our request.

Header adoption matrix

HTTPS is nearly universal; the browser-side protections that sit on top of it are not. The matrix shows each header’s adoption rate for each government level and for sites with and without a CDN in front. A Content-Security-Policy is counted when the header is present at all; the “CSP with script rules” column counts only policies with a default-src or script-src directive, which is what limits injected scripts. Many policies we saw contain only upgrade-insecure-requests or frame-ancestors.

Valid HTTPSRedirectHSTS sentHSTS 1 yrPreloadedCSPCSP with script rulesnosniffReferrerFramingNo TLS 1.0/1.1FederalFederal, Valid HTTPS: 96.9% of 796 websites97Federal, Redirect: 90.1% of 796 websites90Federal, HSTS sent: 90.8% of 796 websites91Federal, HSTS 1 yr: 85.9% of 796 websites86Federal, Preloaded: 62.7% of 796 websites63Federal, CSP: 41.8% of 796 websites42Federal, CSP with script rules: 20.5% of 796 websites20Federal, nosniff: 81.3% of 796 websites81Federal, Referrer: 35.7% of 796 websites36Federal, Framing: 84.7% of 796 websites85Federal, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 92.2% of 796 websites92State agenciesState agencies, Valid HTTPS: 88.5% of 730 websites88State agencies, Redirect: 89.3% of 730 websites89State agencies, HSTS sent: 48.6% of 730 websites49State agencies, HSTS 1 yr: 38.4% of 730 websites38State agencies, Preloaded: 17.7% of 730 websites18State agencies, CSP: 27.3% of 730 websites27State agencies, CSP with script rules: 10.1% of 730 websites10State agencies, nosniff: 55.2% of 730 websites55State agencies, Referrer: 18.2% of 730 websites18State agencies, Framing: 57.1% of 730 websites57State agencies, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 77.7% of 730 websites78CountiesCounties, Valid HTTPS: 94.5% of 1,770 websites94Counties, Redirect: 82.1% of 1,770 websites82Counties, HSTS sent: 33.1% of 1,770 websites33Counties, HSTS 1 yr: 26.0% of 1,770 websites26Counties, Preloaded: 38.3% of 1,770 websites38Counties, CSP: 39.0% of 1,770 websites39Counties, CSP with script rules: 25.8% of 1,770 websites26Counties, nosniff: 56.3% of 1,770 websites56Counties, Referrer: 39.6% of 1,770 websites40Counties, Framing: 51.7% of 1,770 websites52Counties, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 79.4% of 1,770 websites79CitiesCities, Valid HTTPS: 95.9% of 6,696 websites96Cities, Redirect: 86.2% of 6,696 websites86Cities, HSTS sent: 30.9% of 6,696 websites31Cities, HSTS 1 yr: 21.8% of 6,696 websites22Cities, Preloaded: 25.0% of 6,696 websites25Cities, CSP: 37.1% of 6,696 websites37Cities, CSP with script rules: 28.2% of 6,696 websites28Cities, nosniff: 54.3% of 6,696 websites54Cities, Referrer: 40.2% of 6,696 websites40Cities, Framing: 51.7% of 6,696 websites52Cities, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 78.8% of 6,696 websites7950 state portals50 state portals, Valid HTTPS: 91.4% of 35 websites9150 state portals, Redirect: 91.4% of 35 websites9150 state portals, HSTS sent: 71.4% of 35 websites7150 state portals, HSTS 1 yr: 57.1% of 35 websites5750 state portals, Preloaded: 2.9% of 35 websites350 state portals, CSP: 20.0% of 35 websites2050 state portals, CSP with script rules: 8.6% of 35 websites950 state portals, nosniff: 65.7% of 35 websites6650 state portals, Referrer: 25.7% of 35 websites2650 state portals, Framing: 68.6% of 35 websites6950 state portals, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 74.3% of 35 websites74State and local, CDN seenState and local, CDN seen, Valid HTTPS: 97.7% of 4,024 websites98State and local, CDN seen, Redirect: 94.7% of 4,024 websites95State and local, CDN seen, HSTS sent: 43.1% of 4,024 websites43State and local, CDN seen, HSTS 1 yr: 32.5% of 4,024 websites33State and local, CDN seen, Preloaded: 26.2% of 4,024 websites26State and local, CDN seen, CSP: 33.2% of 4,024 websites33State and local, CDN seen, CSP with script rules: 21.2% of 4,024 websites21State and local, CDN seen, nosniff: 59.8% of 4,024 websites60State and local, CDN seen, Referrer: 37.4% of 4,024 websites37State and local, CDN seen, Framing: 53.0% of 4,024 websites53State and local, CDN seen, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 66.1% of 4,024 websites66State and local, no CDN seenState and local, no CDN seen, Valid HTTPS: 93.0% of 5,172 websites93State and local, no CDN seen, Redirect: 78.7% of 5,172 websites79State and local, no CDN seen, HSTS sent: 24.7% of 5,172 websites25State and local, no CDN seen, HSTS 1 yr: 17.2% of 5,172 websites17State and local, no CDN seen, Preloaded: 27.6% of 5,172 websites28State and local, no CDN seen, CSP: 39.4% of 5,172 websites39State and local, no CDN seen, CSP with script rules: 30.3% of 5,172 websites30State and local, no CDN seen, nosniff: 50.7% of 5,172 websites51State and local, no CDN seen, Referrer: 39.0% of 5,172 websites39State and local, no CDN seen, Framing: 51.4% of 5,172 websites51State and local, no CDN seen, No TLS 1.0/1.1: 88.7% of 5,172 websites89

Cell value = percent of working homepages sending the header (or passing the check). “Framing” counts X-Frame-Options or a CSP frame-ancestors directive.

Legacy TLS lives mostly at the CDN edge

18% of state and local hosts accepted a handshake capped at TLS 1.1, even though RFC 8996 (March 2021) says TLS 1.0 and 1.1 MUST NOT be used and NIST SP 800-52 Rev. 2 requires government servers to support TLS 1.2. The rate splits sharply by what sits in front of the site. Behind Cloudflare, 41% of hosts accepted the old protocols; with no CDN header seen, 5% did. Cloudflare’s own documentation says “TLS 1.0 is the version that Cloudflare sets by default”, so many of these are an unchanged dashboard setting, not an old server. That is the cheapest fix in this report: a single minimum TLS version setting at the edge.

Share of websites behind each edge that accepted a TLS 1.0 or 1.1 handshakeCloudflare (n=3,069)Cloudflare: 40.6% of 3,069 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.141%Azure Front Door / CDN (n=264)Azure Front Door / CDN: 2.3% of 264 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.12%Fastly (n=230)Fastly: 1.3% of 230 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.11%Akamai (n=158)Akamai: 4.5% of 158 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.14%Amazon CloudFront (n=122)Amazon CloudFront: 5.8% of 122 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.16%Vercel / Netlify / GitHub Pages (n=69)Vercel / Netlify / GitHub Pages: 1.4% of 69 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.11%Imperva (n=49)Imperva: 2.0% of 49 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.12%Sucuri (n=43)Sucuri: 2.3% of 43 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.12%No CDN header seen (n=5,032)No CDN header seen: 4.7% of 5,032 websites accepted TLS 1.0 or 1.15%
CDN or edge provider (from response headers) State and local sites Share of working sites Accepts TLS 1.0/1.1 HSTS 1 yr or preload
Cloudflare 3,081 33.5% 41% 47%
Azure Front Door / CDN 267 2.9% 2% 42%
Fastly 231 2.5% 1% 77%
Akamai 158 1.7% 4% 97%
Amazon CloudFront 126 1.4% 6% 67%
Vercel / Netlify / GitHub Pages 69 0.8% 1% 100%
Imperva 49 0.5% 2% 31%
Sucuri 43 0.5% 2% 21%

Providers are identified only from response headers (for example cf-ray for Cloudflare, x-amz-cf-id for CloudFront, akamai-grn for Akamai). Sites behind a provider that adds no identifying header are counted as “no CDN seen”.

Certificates and software banners

Certificates

Of 11,339 state and local hosts that completed a TLS handshake, 500 presented a certificate that failed standard validation (expired, wrong hostname or incomplete chain), 75 had already expired, 705 (6.2%) expire within 30 days of the scan and 27 within 7 days. Certificates that renew automatically often sit inside a 30-day window for a short time, so the 7-day count is the stronger warning sign.

PHP version banners after 21 October

PHP shipped 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 on 21 October 2026 to fix two critical, unauthenticated remote code execution flaws (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619). 435 of 9,196 state and local homepages announce an exact PHP version in their X-Powered-By header, and 119 of those announce a version older than the 21 October releases. A banner can be stale or patched by a Linux distribution, so this measures version disclosure, not exposure.

What this means for MSPs and government IT teams

Most of the gap between local and federal sites is configuration, not new spending. In order of effort: set the CDN or load balancer minimum TLS version to 1.2 (1,270 of the 1,980 legacy-TLS hosts we found sit behind a CDN, 1,244 of them behind Cloudflare); add Strict-Transport-Security with max-age=31536000 once every subdomain serves HTTPS, then submit the domain at hstspreload.org; add X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff and a Referrer-Policy, two static headers that rarely break anything; and only then build a real Content-Security-Policy, which needs testing against each site’s scripts. Remove version numbers from X-Powered-By and Server headers. If you support municipal clients, the same checks on their mail domains are in our DMARC adoption statistics, and patch priority for the platforms behind these sites belongs with the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities analysis.

How we compare with earlier studies

The most-cited figure on this topic is from August 2018, when ITIF’s Benchmarking State Government Websites found that only 44 percent of 400 state government websites passed its HTTPS test, which graded certificate and TLS configuration. Our test is different (valid certificate and a working HTTPS homepage), so the two numbers are not directly comparable, but on today’s data 88% of 730 working state-government websites pass our HTTPS check. For registration trends across top-level domains, see our domain name statistics.

Frequently asked questions

How secure are government websites?

On basic transport security, most are fine: 95% of 9,196 state and local .gov homepages we scanned on 11 November 2026 serve HTTPS with a valid certificate and 86% redirect HTTP to HTTPS. The gaps are in hardening: 45% meet a one-year HSTS policy or preload, 37% send a Content-Security-Policy, and 18% still accept TLS 1.0 or 1.1. Federal sites, which fall under BOD 18-01, score 80.8 of 100 on our index against 67.6 for state and local sites.

Are .gov websites secure?

A .gov domain proves the site belongs to a verified US government body, and since 1 September 2020 every newly registered .gov domain is HSTS preloaded. Older domains are not automatically covered: 27% of state and local .gov websites in our scan are on Chromium’s preload list, against 63% of federal ones.

Which state has the most secure government websites?

In our November 2026 scan, Washington (79.1), Massachusetts (77.0) and Connecticut (76.9) had the highest average web hygiene scores across their state, county and city .gov homepages. The score is a 100-point index of seven passive checks; the table above has every state.

How can I check a government website’s security online?

Look for https:// and the .gov ending, then check the response headers. From a terminal, ‘curl -sI https://example.gov/’ shows Strict-Transport-Security, Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options and Referrer-Policy, and the preload status of a domain is public at hstspreload.org. These are the same checks used for the 9,196 sites in this study.

Who is responsible for the security of a government website?

The government body that registered the .gov domain. CISA runs the .gov registry and lists a security contact for each domain, but it does not operate state or local websites. Federal agencies are bound by BOD 18-01; state, county and city governments are not, and their one-year HSTS rate (45%) trails the federal rate (91%).

Do state and local government websites still use TLS 1.0?

Some accept it. 18% of 11,339 state and local hosts that completed a modern handshake also completed a handshake capped at TLS 1.1. Of those, 1,244 of 1,980 sit behind Cloudflare, whose documentation says TLS 1.0 is the version it sets by default.

Download the data. government-website-security-by-state-2026.csv (CSV). Licensed under CC BY 4.0: free to reuse with attribution to The Uptime Report.

Free to cite and republish with a link to this page. The CSV holds the aggregates by government type, state and CDN provider shown above. It contains no per-website results.

Methodology

Population. CISA’s dotgov-data file current-full.csv (CC0 1.0, last updated 10 November 2026), domain types City, County and State or territory for the state and local groups, and Federal, Federal – Executive, Federal – Legislative and Federal – Judicial for the benchmark. States are the two-letter state field in the file; territories are kept in the totals but not ranked. Each registered domain counts once; we tested the apex domain, or www when only www resolved.

What our code did per domain. One DNS lookup each for A and AAAA records; one GET of /robots.txt (a site whose robots.txt disallowed “/” for all agents was not fetched further: 108 state and local sites); one GET of http://domain/ with redirects followed hop by hop; one GET of https://domain/ only when the HTTP chain did not end on HTTPS; one TLS handshake with default settings (protocol version, certificate validity and expiry); and one TLS handshake capped at TLS 1.1 with no other probing. Nothing else was requested: no other paths, ports, forms or logins. User-Agent: UptimeReportResearch/1.0 (+https://theuptimereport.com/about/). Requests were capped at 6 per second across all hosts and run one at a time per host with at least 0.6 seconds between them; DNS used 5 concurrent lookups. Scan date: 11 November 2026.

Definitions. Working site: the final response had status below 400 (2,080 state and local homepages, including 274 state-agency ones, answered our request with an error status, most often a 403 from a bot-protection layer, and are excluded from header rates and scores; their TLS results are still counted). Valid HTTPS: a TLS handshake that passed standard certificate and hostname validation. HTTP to HTTPS: the HTTP chain ended on an https:// URL. HSTS one year: a Strict-Transport-Security max-age of at least 31,536,000 seconds on the final HTTPS response (the “strong HSTS” threshold in CISA’s pshtt scanner), or a domain on Chromium’s HSTS preload list in force-https mode. Legacy TLS accepted: the TLS 1.1-capped handshake completed with TLS 1.0 or 1.1. CDN: identified from response header names and values only.

Limitations. One request per check is a snapshot; headers can vary by page, and some sites block scripted traffic. Domains used only for email or redirects count as listed but not as working sites. A CDN accepting TLS 1.0 at its edge does not mean the origin server does. State scores mix state, county and city sites in the proportions each state has registered on .gov, and many local governments use .us, .org or .com domains that this list does not cover.

Not advice. This is a measurement of public responses, not a security assessment of any organization. We do not publish results for individual sites.

Cite as:The Uptime Report. "Government Website Security 2026: 45% of State and Local .gov Sites Meet the Federal HSTS Bar, vs 91% of Federal." November 2026. https://theuptimereport.com/government-website-security-study-2026/

References

  1. CISA, dotgov-data repository (current-full.csv), CC0 1.0. Accessed November 2026.
  2. Chromium, HSTS preload list (transport_security_state_static.json). Accessed November 2026.
  3. CISA, Binding Operational Directive 18-01: Enhance Email and Web Security. Accessed November 2026.
  4. OMB, M-22-09, Moving the U.S. Government Toward Zero Trust Cybersecurity Principles. Accessed November 2026.
  5. CISA, pshtt scanner documentation (Strong HSTS definition). Accessed November 2026.
  6. get.gov, Security best practices for .gov domains. Accessed November 2026.
  7. get.gov, An intent to preload (June 2021). Accessed November 2026.
  8. IETF, RFC 8996: Deprecating TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Accessed November 2026.
  9. NIST, SP 800-52 Rev. 2. Accessed November 2026.
  10. Cloudflare, TLS protocols documentation. Accessed November 2026.
  11. PHP, 21 October 2026 security release announcements. Accessed November 2026.
  12. ITIF, Benchmarking State Government Websites (August 2018). Accessed November 2026.

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