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Security report for alexanderhughes.com

Alexander Hughes · Other · N/a

High risk. 6 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, SSL/TLS and 2 other checks.

Security score

37/100

Risk levelHigh

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

Alexander Hughes is a well-established global executive search and leadership advisory firm with over 60 years of experience and a presence in more than 50 offices across 51 countries. The company specializes in attracting top leadership talent and providing governance, human capital assessment, succession planning, and interim executive services to global firms. Their website reflects a professional and comprehensive business model targeting corporate clients worldwide. Technically, the website is built on WordPress and leverages modern JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and Lightslider, with analytics powered by Matomo. Hosting is provided by Cloudways, and the site employs a strong Content Security Policy and other security headers. However, the SSL certificate is invalid or missing, and no modern TLS protocols are enabled, which significantly impacts the security posture. Security-wise, while some best practices like CSP and HSTS are implemented, the lack of valid HTTPS and TLS support is a critical vulnerability. No explicit security or incident response policies are found, and no contact emails or phone numbers are directly listed on the site, which may affect user trust. Privacy and cookie policies are present and appear GDPR compliant. Overall, the site is professionally designed with excellent content quality and user experience but requires urgent remediation of SSL/TLS issues to improve security and trustworthiness.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
18/ 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

      No HTTPS encryption

      GDPR requires appropriate security measures for personal data

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate for HTTPS

    • 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

  2. SSL/TLS

    TLS encrypts the connection and proves the site is really yours. Weak or expiring certificates trigger browser warnings and put traffic at risk.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS Encryption

      Website does not use HTTPS encryption, making all data transmission vulnerable to interception

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS

  3. 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 X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

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

Keep watching alexanderhughes.com

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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  • 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
0
Security headers
50
Email security
50
DNS health
85
Network security
20
GDPR outside view
18
Average
37

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

Alexander Hughes holds a strong market position as a global executive search firm with a broad international footprint and a diverse portfolio of leadership advisory services. Their business model focuses on high-value professional services targeting corporate clients seeking leadership talent and governance solutions. The firm benefits from a long history since 1957, indicating stability and experience. Their partnership ecosystem includes a web development partner (Mentalo) and uses Microsoft Outlook for mail protection. The company leverages digital marketing and analytics tools to support growth and client engagement. The website content and structure support clear navigation and highlight key services and industry sectors, reinforcing their expertise and global reach. However, the absence of direct contact details on the homepage and no visible terms of service or security policies may limit transparency for some users.

Security posture

The current security posture of the website is moderate to poor due to the invalid SSL certificate and absence of enabled TLS protocols, which are critical for secure communications. The presence of security headers such as Content Security Policy, HSTS, and X-Content-Type-Options is positive and indicates awareness of security best practices. However, the CSP includes 'unsafe-inline' and 'unsafe-eval', which could be tightened to reduce risk. No OCSP stapling or session resumption mechanisms are enabled, which could impact performance and security. No explicit incident response or vulnerability disclosure policies are found, which may affect the firm's readiness to handle security incidents. Overall, the site requires immediate SSL/TLS remediation and further security hardening to meet industry standards.

Recommendations

  1. Obtain and install a valid SSL certificate to enable HTTPS and secure communications.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and disable deprecated versions.
  3. Implement OCSP stapling and session resumption to improve SSL performance and security.
  4. Review and tighten Content Security Policy to remove 'unsafe-inline' and 'unsafe-eval' directives.
  5. Publish explicit security policies including incident response and vulnerability disclosure to enhance transparency and trust.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on WordPress and uses a variety of JavaScript libraries including jQuery, Lightslider, and Parallax.js for enhanced UI/UX. Analytics are handled by Matomo, indicating a preference for privacy-conscious tracking. Hosting is provided by Cloudways, as indicated by cache headers. The site is mobile responsive with good accessibility and SEO optimization, including proper meta tags, Open Graph tags, and JSON-LD structured data for organization and breadcrumb navigation. However, performance metrics are missing, and SSL/TLS configuration is critically flawed, which could impact user trust and search engine ranking. The site uses a comprehensive Content Security Policy and other security headers but could improve by removing unsafe script directives.
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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