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Security report for haw-hamburg.de

Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg · Education · Germany

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and Network security.

Security score

69/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg (HAW Hamburg) is a leading public university of applied sciences in Northern Germany, focused on providing sustainable solutions to societal challenges through high-quality education and research. The institution offers a broad range of Bachelor and Master degree programs, continuing education, and fosters international cooperation with students and partners worldwide. The website reflects a professional and comprehensive digital presence, targeting prospective and current students, staff, and researchers. Technically, the site is built on TYPO3 CMS with Bootstrap, ensuring responsive design and good accessibility, though performance is hindered by slow load times. Security posture is weakened by an invalid or missing SSL certificate, despite the presence of HSTS headers and absence of known SSL vulnerabilities. Privacy compliance is supported by a comprehensive privacy policy but lacks a cookie consent mechanism. Overall, the site is trustworthy and professional but requires urgent SSL remediation and performance improvements.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of haw-hamburg.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. Network security

    Services reachable from the internet are the first thing attackers probe. Anything open that does not need to be should be closed.

    • High

      High-Risk Service Exposed: FTP

      Port 21 (FTP) is publicly accessible - FTP - Often unencrypted file transfer

      What to do: Consider restricting access to FTP or implementing strong authentication

      • NIS2 21(2)(e)
      • IR 2024/2690 6.7.2(f): Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690, Annex point 6.7.2(f): Network security
      • NIST CM-7: NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CM-7: Least Functionality
      • NIST SC-7: NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 SC-7: Boundary Protection

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

Keep watching haw-hamburg.de

This scan found 21 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
70
DNS health
85
Network security
75
GDPR outside view
18
Average
69

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

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention haw-hamburg.de, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
6,394
Employees
190
Customers
5,252
Third parties
952
Weak passwords
12%

Latest record dated 2026-06-17 · 120 subdomains affected

See the 10 newest leaked credentials

A one-off add-on to this report that lists the most recent identifier and password pairs OffSeq Breach holds for haw-hamburg.de.

Select it in the checkout above.

Masked preview

  • –sts.is.haw-hamburg.de2026-06-17
  • –sts.is.haw-hamburg.de2026-06-11
  • –sts.is.haw-hamburg.de2026-06-11
  • –haw-mailer.haw-hamburg.de2026-06-02
  • –myhaw.haw-hamburg.de2026-05-31

Breach keeps ingesting new leaks, so these numbers can grow between scans.

Open in Breach(opens in a new tab)Monitor on Breach(opens in a new tab)

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

HAW Hamburg holds a strong market position as a major educational institution in Germany, serving nearly 16,000 students with 39 Bachelor and 35 Master programs. Its business model centers on public higher education with research and transfer activities. The university maintains a diverse international community and multiple partnerships, including a dedicated online shop and social media engagement. The website's content and navigation are well-structured, supporting various user groups such as prospective students, employees, and international visitors. The institution demonstrates commitment to quality and diversity through certifications like system accreditation and diversity audits. Growth indicators include active research projects and international programs. However, the lack of explicit contact information and incident response policies on the website suggests areas for transparency improvement.

Security posture

The website's security maturity is moderate but compromised by the absence of a valid SSL certificate, which is critical for protecting user data and ensuring trust. While HSTS is enabled, it lacks full domain coverage and preload status. The site avoids common SSL/TLS vulnerabilities and does not expose sensitive data in the HTML content. No advanced security headers beyond HSTS are detected, and session resumption and OCSP stapling are not implemented, which could enhance security and performance. There is no visible security or incident response policy, nor contact channels for reporting security incidents. The lack of DNSSEC and CAA records further limits domain security. Overall, the site requires immediate SSL certificate installation and enhancement of security headers and policies to meet best practices and compliance standards.

Recommendations

  1. Install and maintain a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS and improve user trust.
  2. Implement a cookie consent mechanism to comply with GDPR and enhance privacy transparency.
  3. Optimize website performance to reduce load times, improving user experience and SEO.
  4. Enhance security headers by adding Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options.
  5. Publish clear security policies and incident response contact information to improve transparency and readiness.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is powered by TYPO3 CMS with Bootstrap framework, leveraging jQuery and Matomo for analytics. It is hosted on infrastructure using DFN DNS servers, indicating academic or research network hosting. The site is mobile-optimized with good accessibility and SEO practices, including meta tags and structured navigation. However, performance is slow with a load time exceeding 30 seconds and a large number of resources (178). The SSL configuration is incomplete due to an invalid certificate and lack of modern TLS protocols. No DNSSEC or CAA records are configured, which could improve domain security. The site uses Matomo analytics with cookie-less tracking enabled, reflecting privacy-conscious data collection. Overall, the technical stack is modern but requires SSL and performance improvements.
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. 56/100Medium34 findingsView report
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