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Security report for fraunhofer.de

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft · Technology · Germany

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and Security headers.

Security score

73/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is a leading German applied research organization established in 1949, focusing on innovative solutions in key technology sectors such as energy, transport, healthcare, and manufacturing. The organization operates through a network of institutes and partnerships, providing research, development, and technology transfer services to industry and public sectors. Their website reflects a mature digital presence with comprehensive content, clear navigation, and a professional design tailored to a diverse audience including customers, partners, scientists, and students. Technically, the site uses a modern tech stack including jQuery, Masonry, Bootstrap, and Adobe Experience Manager as CMS, delivering moderate performance and good mobile optimization. Security-wise, the site employs HTTPS with TLS 1.2, has valid SPF and DMARC email policies, but lacks advanced security headers and HSTS, indicating room for improvement. Privacy compliance is strong with a comprehensive privacy policy and terms of service, though no explicit cookie consent mechanism was detected. Overall, the site scores well on business credibility and content quality, with minor technical and security enhancements recommended.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of fraunhofer.de. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
18/ 100 · Critical
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

4 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.

    • Critical

      EU business without adequate privacy measures

      EU businesses are subject to strict GDPR requirements

      What to do: Implement comprehensive GDPR compliance including privacy policy, cookie consent, and data protection measures

    • 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

  2. 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"

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

Keep watching fraunhofer.de

This scan found 19 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
92
Security headers
75
Email security
75
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
18
Average
73

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

Fraunhofer holds a strong market position as a premier applied research institution in Germany, serving strategic sectors like energy, transport, and healthcare. Their business model centers on research and development services, technology transfer, and education through the Fraunhofer Academy. The organization targets a broad audience including industry clients, academic partners, and government entities. The website highlights active engagement in innovation projects, strategic research fields, and international cooperation. The presence of multiple subsidiaries and partner sites indicates a robust ecosystem. Their communications emphasize sustainability, scientific excellence, and societal impact, supporting their reputation and growth. The platform also facilitates customer engagement via Fraunhofer Match, enhancing solution delivery efficiency.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security maturity level with HTTPS enforced and no critical SSL vulnerabilities detected. Email security is supported by valid SPF and DMARC records. However, the absence of HSTS, Content-Security-Policy, and other security headers reduces the overall security posture. No incident response or vulnerability disclosure information is publicly available, which could hinder rapid response to security events. The site uses secure cipher suites but lacks TLS 1.3 support and OCSP stapling, which are modern best practices. Forms are present but no explicit security measures like CAPTCHA or input validation details were observed. Overall, the security posture is adequate but could benefit from enhancements to headers, encryption protocols, and transparency around incident handling.

Recommendations

  1. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with includeSubDomains and preload to prevent protocol downgrade attacks.
  2. Implement Content-Security-Policy (CSP) headers to mitigate cross-site scripting and related attacks.
  3. Enable OCSP stapling to improve SSL certificate revocation checking performance and security.
  4. Publish a security.txt file and a vulnerability disclosure policy to improve transparency and incident response readiness.
  5. Upgrade SSL/TLS configuration to support TLS 1.3 for better security and performance.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Adobe Experience Manager CMS, leveraging JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, Masonry, Bootstrap, and Video.js for UI and media handling. The site has a moderate load time (~5 seconds) with over 60 resources and a page size of ~1.1 MB, indicating potential optimization opportunities. Mobile optimization is good with responsive design elements. SEO is supported by comprehensive meta tags and Open Graph data. Accessibility is basic but could be improved with more ARIA roles and semantic markup. Hosting appears to be on dedicated IPs with no DNSSEC or CAA records, which could be enhanced for DNS security. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid but could benefit from performance tuning and security hardening.
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. 68/100 −2Medium32 findingsView report
  2. 70/100Medium31 findingsView report
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