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Security report for erinstead.com

Erin Stead · Retail · United States

Medium risk. 8 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 2 other checks.

Security score

63/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Erin Stead's website serves as a professional portfolio and e-commerce platform showcasing the artist's works, primarily children's books and related artwork. The site is hosted on Squarespace, leveraging its platform for content management and online sales. The design is clean, visually appealing, and optimized for mobile devices, providing a good user experience for visitors interested in the artist's offerings. However, the site lacks critical business and privacy information such as contact details, privacy policies, and terms of service, which are important for trust and compliance. Technically, the website uses modern web technologies and benefits from Squarespace's secure hosting environment, including HTTPS with HSTS enabled, ensuring encrypted communication and protection against certain attacks. The absence of additional security headers and explicit privacy compliance measures indicates room for improvement in security posture and regulatory adherence. From a security perspective, the site shows no signs of vulnerabilities or malicious content, but the missing WHOIS registration data raises concerns about domain legitimacy and transparency. This discrepancy suggests either privacy protection or an unregistered domain, which could impact trustworthiness. The lack of contact information and security policies further limits the site's credibility from a security and compliance standpoint. Overall, while the website effectively presents the artist's work and facilitates e-commerce, it should address privacy, contact, and security transparency to enhance trust and compliance. Strategic improvements in these areas will strengthen the site's security posture and business credibility, benefiting both the owner and visitors.

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 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

    • 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 erinstead.com

This scan found 23 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

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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
62
Security headers
35
Email security
65
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
35
Average
63

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

The website positions Erin Stead as a niche artist and author specializing in children's books and related artwork. The business model combines portfolio showcasing with direct e-commerce sales, targeting general audiences including parents, educators, and collectors. The site leverages Squarespace's platform for ease of content management and online transactions. There is no evidence of partnerships, subsidiaries, or parent companies, indicating a small independent operation. The absence of detailed business information and contact data limits insights into revenue streams and growth indicators. The site maintains consistent branding and good content quality, supporting a professional market presence within its niche.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security maturity level with HTTPS enforced and HSTS enabled, ensuring secure data transmission. However, the lack of additional security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options reduces defense-in-depth. No explicit privacy or cookie policies are present, indicating compliance gaps with GDPR and other regulations. The absence of incident response contacts or vulnerability disclosure policies limits readiness for security incidents. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the analysis. Overall, the security posture is adequate for a small e-commerce site but requires enhancements in policy transparency and security controls to meet higher compliance standards.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish comprehensive privacy and cookie policies to comply with GDPR and build user trust.
  2. Add explicit security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options to enhance security.
  3. Provide clear contact information including business email and phone number for customer and security incident communication.
  4. Establish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.
  5. Regularly review WHOIS registration status to ensure domain legitimacy and transparency.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Erin Stead
Description
Website for Erin Stead, presumably an artist or author, showcasing works such as 'A Sick Day for Amos McGee', 'and then it's spring', 'Bear Has a Story to Tell', 'if you want to see a whale', 'Lenny & Lucy', and 'Tony'.
Key services
Showcasing artwork and books, E-commerce for purchasing works
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Squarespace, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5
Platforms
Squarespace
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
basic

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • HSTS enabled

Analytics and tracking

Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Transparency
poor

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a Squarespace hosted portfolio and e-commerce site for artist/author Erin Stead.
  2. No WHOIS registration data available, which is unusual for an active domain.
  3. No privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies found on the site.
  4. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly provided.
  5. Site uses HTTPS with HSTS enabled, indicating good SSL configuration.
  6. No security or incident response information provided.
  7. No analytics or tracking scripts detected beyond Squarespace standard scripts.
  8. No advertising or marketing tools detected.
  9. Content is safe and suitable for general audiences.
  10. Navigation and design are clear and professional.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on the Squarespace platform, utilizing standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. It employs modern fonts loaded via Typekit and uses optimized images hosted on Squarespace's CDN. The site is mobile responsive and performs moderately well, though no explicit performance metrics were available. The technical implementation is clean with no broken elements detected. However, the site lacks advanced SEO and accessibility features beyond basic implementation. There is no evidence of third-party analytics or marketing tools, which simplifies the technical footprint but limits marketing insights. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid for a small portfolio and e-commerce site but could benefit from enhanced SEO, accessibility, and security configurations.
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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