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Security report for certified-senders.org

Certified Senders Alliance · Technology · Germany

Medium risk. 5 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

65/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Certified Senders Alliance (CSA) is a technology-focused organization operating as a central whitelisting authority for commercial email senders and mailbox providers. Their primary mission is to improve the quality and deliverability of commercial emails such as newsletters, invoices, and order confirmations, while protecting recipients from spam and abuse. CSA offers certification services, monitoring tools, and data insights to help email service providers and senders maintain high reputation and compliance standards. The organization is positioned as a trusted intermediary in the email marketing ecosystem, supported by testimonials from major industry players and operated under the eco Association of the Internet Industry in Germany. Technically, the website is built on WordPress with common web technologies including Bootstrap, jQuery, and Font Awesome. It uses plugins for cookie consent (Borlabs Cookie) and bot protection (hCaptcha). However, the site suffers from a lack of a valid SSL certificate and does not support modern TLS protocols, which is a critical security shortfall. Performance is suboptimal with a slow page load time and a large page size, though mobile optimization and SEO practices are generally good. From a security perspective, the site implements DMARC with reporting and provides abuse contact emails, indicating some level of incident response readiness. However, the absence of HTTPS, security headers, and OCSP stapling significantly weakens the security posture. No explicit security policy or vulnerability disclosure mechanism is found. Privacy compliance is well addressed with comprehensive privacy and cookie policies and a consent mechanism. Overall, while the business credibility and content quality are strong, the technical and security implementations require urgent improvements to protect user data and enhance trust. Strategic recommendations include immediate SSL certificate installation, enabling modern TLS, adding security headers, and optimizing site performance.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
43/ 100 · High
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

5 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. 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 Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

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

    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…

  2. 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

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

Keep watching certified-senders.org

This scan found 18 issues across 5 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

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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
100
Security headers
15
Email security
50
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
43
Average
65

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

CSA operates in the email technology sector, providing certification and monitoring services that enhance email deliverability and reputation management. Their business model revolves around certifying email senders and offering data-driven insights to reduce spam and improve inbox placement. The organization targets email service providers, commercial senders, and mailbox providers, positioning itself as a neutral and trusted intermediary. Partnerships with industry leaders and integration with monitoring tools underscore their market relevance. The parent organization, eco, lends additional credibility. Growth indicators include active event hosting, webinars, and a regularly updated blog. Revenue streams likely include certification fees and monitoring subscriptions. The company maintains a professional web presence with clear contact channels and trust signals.

Security posture

The current security maturity level is low due to the absence of HTTPS and modern TLS protocols, exposing users to potential interception and man-in-the-middle attacks. The website lacks essential security headers and OCSP stapling, further weakening its defense against common web threats. The use of hCaptcha on forms and DMARC with abuse reporting are positive controls. However, no formal security policy or vulnerability disclosure process is evident, which could hinder incident response and transparency. Compliance with GDPR is supported by comprehensive privacy and cookie policies. The lack of SSL is a critical vulnerability that impacts business trust and user safety. Overall, the security culture appears to prioritize compliance but lacks technical rigor in web security implementation.

Recommendations

  1. Install and maintain a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire site.
  2. Enable and enforce modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and disable insecure legacy protocols.
  3. Implement key security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security.
  4. Enable OCSP stapling to improve certificate revocation checking and reduce latency.
  5. Conduct regular security audits and update all third-party plugins and libraries to mitigate vulnerabilities.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
eco - Association of the Internet Industry
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on a WordPress CMS platform using Bootstrap for responsive design and jQuery for interactivity. It employs common plugins such as Borlabs Cookie for GDPR-compliant cookie consent and hCaptcha for bot protection on forms. The site uses external resources from maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com and font-awesome for icons. Performance is hindered by a large page size (~458 KB) and a slow load time (~12.7 seconds), indicating potential optimization opportunities. SEO is well addressed with meta tags, Open Graph, and JSON-LD structured data. Accessibility is basic but present. Hosting appears to be managed via GoDaddy DNS services. The lack of SSL and modern TLS protocols is a significant technical risk. Overall, the infrastructure is standard but requires modernization and security hardening.
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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