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Security report for brickunderground.com

Brick Underground · Real Estate · United States

Medium risk. 3 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and SSL/TLS.

Security score

75/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Brick Underground is a leading online resource dedicated to residential real estate consumers in New York City, serving over 5 million users including buyers, sellers, renters, and apartment dwellers. The website offers comprehensive guides, market reports, and advice on buying, renting, selling, and renovating properties in NYC. It maintains a strong market position as a trusted media platform with professional content and a consistent brand presence. Technically, the site is built on Drupal 9, leveraging modern advertising and analytics technologies such as Google Tag Manager, Prebid.js, and Google Ad Manager. The site is mobile optimized and SEO friendly, providing a good user experience. Security posture is solid with HTTPS and Content Security Policy in place, though additional security headers could enhance protection. Privacy compliance is basic, with no explicit privacy or cookie policies detected in the provided content. The WHOIS data is unavailable, which raises some concerns about domain registration transparency, but the professional site quality and social media presence support legitimacy. Overall, Brick Underground is a reputable real estate information platform with room for improvement in privacy disclosures and security headers.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 100 · Medium
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

3 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.

    • 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.

    • High

      Weak SSL Key Length

      SSL certificate uses 256-bit key, which is considered weak

      What to do: Use at least 2048-bit RSA or 256-bit ECC key

      • CWE-326
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • Mozilla TLS: Mozilla Server Side TLS 6.0 intermediate: rsa_key_size 2048

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Keep watching brickunderground.com

This scan found 20 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
65
Security headers
75
Email security
75
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
75

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

Brick Underground operates in the Real Estate sector, focusing on the NYC residential market. Its business model centers on content-driven advertising, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing, targeting a broad audience of real estate consumers. The platform's competitive advantage lies in its extensive, localized content and strong brand recognition, including awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors. The company leverages partnerships with legal firms and real estate agencies for sponsored content and listings. Growth indicators include a large user base and frequent content updates. The ecosystem includes advertising partners and affiliate programs such as Amazon Associates. Strategic observations suggest focusing on enhancing privacy compliance and expanding direct user engagement through newsletters and social media.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with enforced HTTPS and a Content Security Policy to upgrade insecure requests. However, it lacks several recommended security headers such as Strict-Transport-Security, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options, which could mitigate risks like clickjacking and MIME sniffing. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the HTML content. The site uses secure forms for newsletter subscription but does not display explicit security or incident response policies. There is no evidence of a vulnerability disclosure program or security.txt file. Compliance with GDPR is not clearly indicated, and cookie consent mechanisms are absent. Overall, the site is secure but could improve transparency and header coverage to enhance defense in depth.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publicly disclose a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie policy with GDPR compliance details.
  2. Add additional HTTP security headers including Strict-Transport-Security, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Referrer-Policy.
  3. Establish a vulnerability disclosure program and publish a security.txt file to improve security transparency.
  4. Enhance cookie consent mechanisms to comply with privacy regulations and improve user trust.
  5. Investigate and resolve WHOIS data unavailability to improve domain registration transparency and trustworthiness.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Brick Underground
Description
The NYC's most popular online resource for residential real estate consumers, relied on by more than 5 million buyers, sellers, renters and apartment dwellers.
Key services
Real estate news and market reports, Buying guides, Renting guides, Selling guides, Renovation and improvement advice, Boards and buildings information, Advertising and sponsored content
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal 9, Google Tag Manager, Google Publisher Tags (GPT), Prebid.js, Font Awesome, Connatix Player, Infolinks, AddToAny
Frameworks
Drupal
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Content Security Policy present
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • No visible vulnerable libraries

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager)
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Ad networks
Google Ad Manager (GAM), OpenWeb, OMS
Tracking pixels
Connatix impression trackers, Infolinks, Google Funding Choices
Marketing tools
AddToAny social sharing
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a professional real estate information portal focused on NYC residential market.
  2. Content is rich, well-structured, and updated with recent articles and guides.
  3. Multiple advertising and affiliate programs are integrated.
  4. No privacy or cookie policy pages explicitly found in the provided HTML.
  5. WHOIS data is missing, which is a concern for domain legitimacy verification.
  6. Security headers are minimal but HTTPS is enforced.
  7. No signs of malware or phishing detected.
  8. Social media presence is strong with official Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flipboard links.
Technical notes

Notes

Brick Underground is built on Drupal 9 CMS, utilizing a modern tech stack including Google Tag Manager for analytics, Prebid.js for header bidding, and Google Ad Manager for ad serving. The site integrates multiple third-party advertising and tracking services such as OpenWeb, Connatix, and Infolinks. Performance is moderate with asynchronous loading of scripts and lazy loading of images. The site is mobile optimized with responsive design and accessibility features such as skip links and ARIA labels. SEO is well implemented with canonical links, meta descriptions, Open Graph, and Twitter Card tags. Technical risks include reliance on multiple third-party ad and tracking scripts which may impact privacy and performance. Opportunities exist to improve security headers and privacy disclosures to reduce compliance risks.
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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