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Security report for ethz.ch

ETH Zürich · Education · Switzerland

Low risk. No critical or high findings.

Security score

86/100

Risk levelLow

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

ETH Zürich is a prestigious Swiss university specializing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and research. The website serves as the official digital presence, targeting students, researchers, and the academic community. It provides comprehensive information about the institution's offerings and maintains a consistent brand image. The site is multilingual, supporting German, English, French, and Italian languages, reflecting its international reach. Technically, the website is built on Adobe Experience Manager CMS, utilizing modern JavaScript libraries such as Swiper.js and Google Tag Manager for analytics and user tracking. The site is mobile-optimized and demonstrates good SEO and accessibility practices. Performance is moderate, with room for optimization. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate and implements a cookie consent mechanism that defaults to denying ad and analytics storage, indicating privacy awareness. However, explicit privacy policies, terms of service, security policies, and incident response contacts are not found, representing areas for improvement. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected. Overall, ETH Zürich's website is a professional, trustworthy, and secure platform that effectively supports its educational mission. Strategic enhancements in privacy compliance documentation and security transparency would further strengthen its posture.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of ethz.ch. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
88/ 100 · Low
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

No critical or high findings. These medium findings are worth fixing next.

  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.

    • Medium

      Missing X-XSS-Protection header

      Legacy XSS protection (deprecated but still recommended)

      What to do: Add "X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block"

    • Medium

      Missing Permissions-Policy header

      Controls browser features and APIs

      What to do: Implement a Permissions-Policy to restrict feature access

      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Permissions-Policy: accelerometer=(), autoplay=(), camera=(), cross-origin-isolated=(),…

  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • Medium

      Privacy policy may not be GDPR compliant

      Privacy policy lacks explicit GDPR compliance elements

      What to do: Update privacy policy to explicitly address GDPR requirements and user rights

  3. Email security

    SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop others sending email that looks like it comes from your domain, a common route to phishing and invoice fraud.

    • Medium

      No MTA-STS Policy

      MTA-STS enforces TLS for email delivery

      What to do: Implement MTA-STS to prevent downgrade attacks

  4. 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.

Keep watching ethz.ch

This scan found 13 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
90
Security headers
70
Email security
85
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
88
Average
86

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 top position in the European and global higher education landscape, focusing on STEM disciplines. Its business model is that of a public university, funded and operated to provide education and conduct research. The website reflects this by targeting academic audiences and the public. The institution benefits from strong brand recognition and trust signals inherent to its status. The use of Google Tag Manager and cookie consent tools indicates an awareness of digital marketing and compliance requirements. The absence of commercial advertising or affiliate programs aligns with its non-commercial educational mission. The site’s multilingual support and structured navigation suggest a mature digital strategy aimed at broad accessibility and user engagement.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a solid security foundation with HTTPS enforcement and a cookie consent mechanism that restricts tracking by default. The lack of explicit security headers in the provided data suggests an opportunity to enhance protection against common web attacks. No security policies, incident response contacts, or vulnerability disclosure mechanisms are publicly available, which could limit transparency and responsiveness to security incidents. No signs of vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive information were found in the HTML content. Overall, the security posture is good but could be improved by publishing security-related documentation and implementing additional HTTP security headers.

Recommendations

  1. Publish a comprehensive privacy policy and terms of service accessible from the homepage.
  2. Implement and publicly disclose a security policy and incident response contact information.
  3. Add security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options to enhance protection.
  4. Provide a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting.
  5. Enhance visibility of official contact information including emails and phone numbers for user support and security reporting.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
ETH Zürich
Description
ETH Zürich is a leading science, technology, engineering and mathematics university in Switzerland, providing education, research and innovation.
Key services
Higher education, Research, Innovation, Public information
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, Google Tag Manager, CookieLaw.org Consent SDK, Swiper.js
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Cookie consent with denied ad and analytics storage by default
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website uses HTTPS with valid SSL certificate.
  2. Cookie consent mechanism is implemented with default denial of ad and analytics storage.
  3. No explicit privacy policy or terms of service found on the homepage.
  4. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly found in the provided HTML snippet.
  5. Google Tag Manager is used for analytics and tracking.
  6. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information detected.
  7. Website content is in German with alternate language links for English, French, and Italian.
  8. Site appears to be built on Adobe Experience Manager CMS.
  9. No WAF or blocking mechanisms detected.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Adobe Experience Manager CMS, leveraging modern JavaScript libraries including Swiper.js for UI components and Google Tag Manager for analytics. It uses asynchronous script loading and XMLHttpRequest for dynamic content fetching, indicating a modern and interactive design. The site is responsive and optimized for mobile devices, with good SEO metadata including Open Graph tags for social sharing. Performance is moderate, with potential for further optimization. Accessibility features appear to be implemented, supporting a broad user base. The technical infrastructure supports a professional and scalable digital presence suitable for a large educational institution.
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. 80/100 +1Low24 findingsView report
  2. 79/100 +1Low26 findingsView report
  3. 78/100Low23 findingsView report
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