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Security report for bdo.co.za

BDO · Finance · South Africa

Low risk. No critical or high findings.

Security score

85/100

Risk levelLow

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

BDO South Africa operates as a professional consulting firm specializing in business advisory, audit, tax, and business outsourcing services. The website reflects a well-established presence in the South African finance sector, targeting businesses and organizations seeking expert financial and advisory services. The company positions itself as a trusted partner with a comprehensive service offering tailored to various industries. Technically, the website employs modern technologies including Kentico CMS, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, and Microsoft Application Insights, indicating a mature digital infrastructure with integrated analytics and marketing tools. The site is mobile-optimized and demonstrates good SEO practices, although some accessibility features could be improved. Security-wise, the site enforces HTTPS and uses cookie consent management via Cookiebot, but lacks explicit security headers and visible privacy policy or terms of service pages in the provided content. No WHOIS data is available due to privacy protection, but the domain appears legitimate based on content and technology. Overall, the website is professional and secure with room for enhanced transparency and compliance documentation.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
88/ 100 · Low
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

No critical or high findings. These medium findings are worth fixing next.

  1. DNS health

    DNS sends visitors and email to the right servers. Misconfigured records can cause outages or let someone redirect your traffic.

    • Medium

      DNSSEC Not Enabled

      DNSSEC is not configured for this domain

      What to do: Enable DNSSEC to prevent DNS spoofing attacks

      • CAPEC-142
      • RFC 4033
      • RFC 4035

  2. Email security

    SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop others sending email that looks like it comes from your domain, a common route to phishing and invoice fraud.

    • Medium

      No DKIM record found

      DKIM adds cryptographic signatures to emails

      What to do: Configure DKIM with your email provider

    • Medium

      No MTA-STS Policy

      MTA-STS enforces TLS for email delivery

      What to do: Implement MTA-STS to prevent downgrade attacks

  3. GDPR outside view

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

    • Medium

      Privacy policy may not be GDPR compliant

      Privacy policy lacks explicit GDPR compliance elements

      What to do: Update privacy policy to explicitly address GDPR requirements and user rights

  4. 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.

    • Medium

      Missing X-XSS-Protection header

      Legacy XSS protection (deprecated but still recommended)

      What to do: Add "X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block"

Keep watching bdo.co.za

This scan found 14 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.

Daily monitoring

Recommended

€25per month

  • 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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Full report

€39.90one-time

  • The complete analysis as a PDF you can cite
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  • Lifetime access to this report

Prices incl. 21% VAT. Secure checkout by Mollie; sold by SEQ SIA, Latvia.

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
100
Security headers
70
Email security
70
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
88
Average
85

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

BDO South Africa holds a strong market position as a large professional services firm in the finance sector. Its business model focuses on delivering audit, tax, advisory, and outsourcing services to a broad range of industries. The firm leverages partnerships with major platforms such as LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft for marketing and analytics. Revenue streams likely include consulting fees, audit engagements, and outsourcing contracts. The target customer segments are medium to large enterprises and organizations requiring financial and advisory expertise. Growth indicators include the use of advanced digital marketing and analytics tools. The absence of visible contact information on the homepage suggests a possible reliance on direct client relationships or internal contact channels. The company ecosystem includes integrations with multiple third-party services for enhanced user tracking and marketing effectiveness.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a solid security posture with mandatory HTTPS encryption and a robust cookie consent mechanism that blocks scripts until user consent is given. The use of Microsoft Application Insights and Hotjar indicates active monitoring of site performance and user behavior. However, the lack of explicit security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options is a gap that could expose the site to certain web-based attacks. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the HTML content. The absence of a published security policy or incident response contact information reduces transparency and may impact compliance with regulations such as GDPR or NIS2. Overall, the security maturity is good but could be improved by adding security headers and publishing clear security and privacy documentation.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish a comprehensive privacy policy and terms of service pages accessible from the homepage.
  2. Add standard security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to enhance protection.
  3. Provide clear and visible contact information including security and incident response contacts to improve transparency and compliance.
  4. Enhance website accessibility features to meet WCAG standards for a broader audience reach.
  5. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts to mitigate risks from external dependencies.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
BDO
Description
BDO is a consulting firm that offers business advisory, audit, tax and numerous business outsourcing services in different sectors and industries
Key services
business advisory, audit, tax, business outsourcing services
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
JavaScript, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, Cookiebot, Microsoft Application Insights, Kentico CMS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Cookie consent with blocking mode
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Secure form submission with source tracking

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Hotjar, Microsoft Application Insights
Tracking level
extensive
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Ad networks
Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads
Tracking pixels
Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, Microsoft Application Insights
Marketing tools
Cookiebot, Hotjar
Transparency
good

Site quality

Design
good
User experience
good
Content relevance
good
Navigation
good
Professionalism
good
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Website uses Cookiebot for GDPR cookie consent management
  2. Multiple third-party analytics and marketing scripts are used with consent
  3. No visible contact emails or phone numbers on the homepage HTML
  4. WHOIS data is unavailable, indicating privacy protection or registry issues
  5. Website is well-branded and professionally designed
  6. No signs of malware or phishing detected in content
  7. No explicit privacy policy or terms of service links found in provided HTML
  8. Forms include source tracking for marketing attribution
  9. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information found
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Kentico CMS and integrates multiple modern technologies such as Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, and Microsoft Application Insights for analytics and marketing. The site uses asynchronous loading for scripts to optimize performance and includes preconnect and preload directives for fonts and CSS to improve load times. Mobile optimization is good with responsive design elements. SEO is supported by meta tags and canonical links. However, no explicit CMS version or hosting provider information was found. The site could benefit from enhanced accessibility and security header implementation. Overall, the technical infrastructure is modern and supports the business objectives effectively.
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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