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Security report for cooperhewitt.org

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum · Non-profit · United States

Medium risk. 6 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

67/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a well-established non-profit cultural institution located in New York City, affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. The museum offers a variety of services including exhibitions, educational programs, memberships, donations, and a retail shop. The website reflects a professional and polished digital presence, targeting a broad audience including design enthusiasts, educators, students, and families. The business model is focused on cultural education and community engagement, supported by memberships and donations. Technically, the website is built on WordPress and leverages modern web technologies such as jQuery, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and Google Tag Manager. The site demonstrates good mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO practices, although performance is moderate. The technical infrastructure supports a secure HTTPS connection, but some security headers could be improved. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS and uses reputable analytics and marketing tools. However, explicit security policies, incident response contacts, and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms are not present. The WHOIS data is unavailable or blocked, which limits domain registration trust analysis, but the Smithsonian affiliation and website professionalism strongly support legitimacy. Overall, the website is a trustworthy and authoritative source for museum visitors and stakeholders, with recommendations to enhance security headers, implement cookie consent, and publish security policies to further strengthen compliance and trust.

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

6 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 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

  3. 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 Protocols Supported

      Server supports weak protocols: TLSv1.1

      What to do: Disable TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and all SSL versions

      • CWE-327
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V12.1.1

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

Keep watching cooperhewitt.org

This scan found 24 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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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
52
Security headers
30
Email security
85
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
67

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

Cooper Hewitt holds a strong market position as a Smithsonian-affiliated design museum, serving a diverse audience with cultural and educational offerings. Its competitive advantage lies in its prestigious affiliation, comprehensive programming, and digital presence including an online collection and shop. Revenue streams include memberships, donations, retail sales, and event programs. The museum maintains partnerships within the Smithsonian ecosystem and leverages digital marketing tools to engage visitors. Growth indicators include active social media, digital exhibitions, and educational outreach. The organization operates as a medium-sized non-profit with a focus on design and culture.

Security posture

The website exhibits a mature security posture with enforced HTTPS and use of secure analytics platforms. However, the absence of explicit security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options, as well as lack of published security policies or incident response contacts, indicates room for improvement. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the HTML content. The site does not implement a cookie consent mechanism, which may affect GDPR compliance. Overall, the security posture is good but could be enhanced by adopting additional best practices and transparency measures.

Recommendations

  1. Implement comprehensive security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  2. Add a cookie consent banner to comply with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
  3. Publish a dedicated security policy and incident response contact information on the website.
  4. Consider creating a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools to minimize privacy risks and improve transparency.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Description
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum located in New York City (2 East 91st St). Open 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily
Key services
Museum exhibitions, Educational programs, Memberships, Donations, Retail shop
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
jQuery, WordPress, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Google Tag Manager, Fundraise Up, Colorbox, Jetpack
Frameworks
WordPress
Platforms
Web
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
80/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of secure analytics and tracking scripts

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Quantcast
Tracking level
extensive
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Ad networks
DoubleClick, Sizmek
Tracking pixels
Facebook Pixel, Quantcast, Pinterest, Reddit Pixel, Sojern, OwnerIQ
Marketing tools
Fundraise Up, WordFly
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a professionally maintained museum site affiliated with Smithsonian Institution
  2. Content is rich, well-structured, and targeted at general public and design community
  3. Uses WordPress CMS with modern tracking and marketing tools
  4. No evidence of security blocking or WAF challenges
  5. WHOIS data is unavailable, limiting domain registration trust analysis
  6. Privacy and terms link to Smithsonian main site, indicating shared policies
  7. No explicit cookie consent mechanism detected
  8. Contact information is clearly presented including phone and address
  9. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure found
Technical notes

Notes

The website is powered by WordPress CMS with a modern tech stack including jQuery and various analytics and marketing scripts. The site is mobile optimized and accessible with good SEO metadata and structured data (JSON-LD). Performance is moderate, likely due to multiple external scripts and tracking pixels. The hosting provider is not explicitly identified but is likely managed by or for the Smithsonian Institution. Technical debt appears low, but opportunities exist to optimize script loading and enhance security headers. Overall, the technical infrastructure supports a professional and user-friendly experience.
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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