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Security report for ethz.ch

ETH Zürich · Education · Switzerland

Low risk. 2 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view.

Security score

80/100

Risk levelLow

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

ETH Zürich is a prestigious Swiss university specializing in science and technology education and research. The website serves as the official homepage, targeting students, researchers, and the academic community. It offers information about academic programs, research initiatives, and institutional news. The site is well-branded and professionally designed, reflecting its status as a leading educational institution. Technically, the website employs modern JavaScript libraries and Google Tag Manager for analytics, and it is built on Adobe Experience Manager CMS, indicating a mature digital infrastructure. Security-wise, the site uses HTTPS and does not expose sensitive data, but lacks visible security headers and formal privacy or cookie policies, which are areas for improvement. Overall, the website is trustworthy and professional but could enhance privacy compliance and security transparency.

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

2 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

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

Keep watching ethz.ch

This scan found 16 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
90
Security headers
70
Email security
85
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
80

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

ETH Zürich holds a strong market position as a top European technical university with a large user base including students and researchers. Its business model is public education and research, funded by government and academic grants. The website supports its mission by providing accessible information and digital services. The use of Google Tag Manager suggests a focus on user behavior analytics for continuous improvement. No direct commercial activities or affiliate partnerships are evident. The absence of explicit contact details or privacy policies on the homepage may reflect a segmented approach to information dissemination, possibly handled on dedicated subpages.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a baseline security posture with enforced HTTPS and no visible sensitive data leaks. However, the lack of security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and Strict-Transport-Security reduces its defense-in-depth. No vulnerability disclosures or incident response contacts are published, which could hinder timely reporting and mitigation of security issues. The use of Google Tag Manager introduces third-party tracking, but user consent mechanisms are not evident, raising privacy compliance concerns. Overall, the security maturity is moderate, suitable for an educational institution but with room for enhancement in transparency and technical controls.

Recommendations

  1. Implement comprehensive privacy and cookie policies with clear user consent mechanisms to comply with GDPR.
  2. Add security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security to strengthen security posture.
  3. Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.
  4. Provide explicit contact information for security incidents and general inquiries to improve trust and responsiveness.
  5. Enhance accessibility features and conduct regular audits to ensure compliance with accessibility standards.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
ETH Zürich
Description
ETH Zürich is a leading science and technology university in Switzerland, providing education, research, and innovation services primarily in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Key services
Higher education, Research, Innovation, Academic programs
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, Google Tag Manager, Swiper.js
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
75/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Official university website with multilingual support.
  2. Uses HTTPS and modern JavaScript libraries.
  3. No visible privacy or cookie policies found in the provided content.
  4. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly found in the HTML snippet.
  5. Google Tag Manager is used for analytics and tracking.
  6. No forms detected in the provided HTML content.
  7. No social media links explicitly found in the provided content.
  8. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information found.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Adobe Experience Manager CMS, leveraging modern JavaScript frameworks and libraries such as Swiper.js for UI components. Google Tag Manager is integrated for analytics and event tracking. The site is responsive and optimized for mobile devices, with a structured CSS grid system and semantic HTML elements. Performance appears moderate, with asynchronous loading of scripts and deferred resource fetching. However, the absence of certain security headers and privacy compliance features indicates technical debt in security and governance aspects. Opportunities exist to modernize security configurations and enhance user privacy controls.
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

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 86/100 +7Low19 findingsView report
  2. 79/100 +1Low26 findingsView report
  3. 78/100Low23 findingsView report
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