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Security report for cityofsalem.net

Salem, Oregon · Government · United States

Medium risk. 8 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

60/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The website www.cityofsalem.net serves as the official online presence for the city government of Salem, Oregon. It provides a wide range of community resources, government services, business information, event calendars, and news updates targeted at residents, businesses, and visitors. The site is well-structured with clear navigation and uses modern web technologies including AngularJS, Bootstrap, and integrates Google Analytics and translation services to enhance user experience and accessibility. The technical infrastructure is robust with CDN support and performance monitoring tools, ensuring moderate to good performance and mobile optimization. Security posture is solid with HTTPS enforcement and some CMS-level XSS protections, though explicit security headers and incident response policies are not evident. Privacy and cookie policies are not clearly presented, which is a compliance gap. The WHOIS data for the domain is missing or unavailable, which is unusual for a government domain and reduces trust from a domain registration perspective. Overall, the site is professional, trustworthy, and safe for general audiences, but could improve transparency and compliance documentation.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
35/ 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

8 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 Privacy Policy found

      GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

      What to do: Add a comprehensive privacy policy page and link to it prominently

    • 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

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

Keep watching cityofsalem.net

This scan found 27 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

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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
59
Security headers
20
Email security
70
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
35
Average
60

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

Salem's official city website positions itself as a key information and service hub for the local government sector. It supports community engagement, business facilitation, and public service delivery. The business model is government service provision funded by public resources. The site targets a broad audience including residents, local businesses, and visitors. Its competitive advantage lies in comprehensive local government content and integration with digital tools for payments, permits, and community interaction. The partnership ecosystem includes Microsoft Forms for surveys and Office365 services. Growth indicators include active event calendars and community programs. Strategic observations suggest a focus on digital accessibility and community outreach, though improvements in privacy and security transparency would enhance credibility.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with HTTPS enforced and CMS-level XSS keyword filtering. Session management scripts indicate attention to user session security. However, the absence of explicit security headers like Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options is a gap. No incident response or vulnerability disclosure information is published, limiting transparency. The WHOIS data absence is a concern for domain legitimacy verification. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the analyzed content. Overall, the site is secure but could benefit from enhanced header policies, published security policies, and improved domain registration transparency to strengthen trust and compliance.

Recommendations

  1. Publish clear and accessible privacy and cookie policies including consent mechanisms to improve compliance.
  2. Implement and verify security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  3. Provide publicly accessible security incident response and vulnerability disclosure policies to enhance transparency.
  4. Investigate and update WHOIS domain registration details to ensure domain legitimacy and trustworthiness.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools to minimize security risks and improve privacy compliance.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Salem, Oregon
Description
Official city government website providing information and services related to the city of Salem, Oregon including community resources, government departments, business resources, events, news, and public services.
Key services
Community information and resources, Government services and departments, Business resources and permits, Event calendar and news updates, Public records and payments
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
AngularJS, jQuery, Bootstrap v3.4.1, Google Analytics (GA4), Google Translate, Lucky Orange (heatmapping), Akamai (CDN), Boomerang (performance monitoring)
Frameworks
AngularJS, Bootstrap
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
80/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Use of session timeout and session extension mechanisms
  • XSS keyword filtering enabled in CMS
  • No exposed sensitive data found in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics (GA4), Lucky Orange, Boomerang
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Lucky Orange, Boomerang
Marketing tools
Google Translate
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Official city government website with comprehensive community and government information
  2. Modern web technologies used with good accessibility and SEO practices
  3. No privacy or cookie policies explicitly found in the provided content
  4. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly found in the homepage HTML
  5. No security incident response or vulnerability disclosure information found
  6. WHOIS data unavailable, which is unusual for a government domain
  7. No WAF or blocking detected, full content accessible
  8. Content safe for general audiences
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a combination of AngularJS and Bootstrap for frontend development, supported by jQuery and various third-party scripts for analytics, translation, and user engagement. Hosting is supported by Akamai CDN, enhancing performance and availability. Google Analytics GA4 and Lucky Orange heatmapping provide user behavior insights. The site is mobile optimized with responsive design and accessibility features such as skip navigation links and ARIA labels. The CMS is Vision CMS, which includes XSS filtering capabilities. Performance monitoring is implemented via Boomerang. The site has moderate loading speed and good SEO metadata but lacks explicit structured data like JSON-LD. Technical risks include reliance on older AngularJS framework and missing security headers. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid but could be modernized and hardened further.
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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