Portugal suspended national exam marking platform ‘over security failings’

Portugal’s online platform for marking national secondary school examinations was taken off line, temporarily, after a security vulnerability was discovered, Education Minister Fernando Alexandre has revealed today.

Speaking to journalists at the Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda facilities in Sintra (the equivalent of the Mint, and where this year’s exam papers are being received and digitised), the minister said the platform was taken offline yesterday after a security review by consultants from Deloitte identified weaknesses in the system.

The Deloitte consultants were brought in to “help resolve a series of technical failures that have disrupted the digital processing and marking of Portugal’s secondary school examinations”, says the official narrative, neglecting to say by how much this will have bumped up the already substantial financial cost of the 2026 exam-marking fiasco.

Fernando Alexandre stressed that the vulnerability identified by Deloitte did not involve a cyberattack or unauthorised access.

“There was no cyberattack or intrusion,” he said. “A vulnerability was identified that needed to be closed. It was important to suspend the platform while the problem, which was straightforward to fix, was resolved and a full sweep of the EduQA platform carried out.”

The minister added that a second security weakness was also detected during the ‘full sweep’.

The EduQA platform then resumed operations this afternoon, allowing teachers to continue marking examination papers.

The security interruption is the latest setback for Portugal’s troubled digital examination system, which has already been affected by technical failures that delayed the correction of exam papers and forced the government to revise the national examination timetable.

Under the updated schedule, exam marking will continue until July 14, instead of the original July 10 deadline. Results will now be published on July 17, three days later than planned.

The second phase of national examinations has also been postponed, beginning on the afternoon of July 20 rather than July 16, and ending on July 24 instead of July 22.

Despite the delays, the government said the timetable for Portugal’s national higher education admissions process remains unchanged.

The suspension of the EduQA platform came amid growing criticism from parents, teachers and opposition parties over the handling of the country’s first fully digital national examination marking process, which has been so beset by technical problems and timetable revisions that parents want the entire process considered null and void. A petition calling for this is doing the rounds and rapidly collecting signatures (since writing about it a few hours ago, the number of signatures has risen by roughly 1,000…)

Source material: Expresso

Natasha Donn

Journalist for the Portugal Resident.