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Security report for heise.de

Heise Medien · Media · Germany

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

Security score

82/100

Risk levelLow

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

Heise Medien operates heise.de, a leading German IT news and media portal offering comprehensive coverage of technology, science, and related topics. The website serves a broad audience including IT professionals and technology enthusiasts, providing news, forums, online magazines, price comparisons, and software downloads. The business model combines advertising, subscription services, and e-commerce. Technically, the site employs modern web technologies, including a consent management platform, analytics, and personalization tools, ensuring a mature digital infrastructure. Security posture is strong with HTTPS and consent mechanisms, though explicit security headers and vulnerability disclosure policies are absent. Overall, the site is professional, trustworthy, and compliant with GDPR principles, though contact and legal policy information could be more explicit.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
85/ 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

2 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 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 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 heise.de

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
95
Security headers
65
Email security
75
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
85
Average
82

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 heise.de, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
8,389
Employees
0
Customers
8,320
Third parties
69
Weak passwords
16%

23 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 heise.de.

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

Technical appendix

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

Business context

Business profile

Heise Medien holds a strong market position in the German IT media sector, leveraging multiple well-known magazine brands and a diversified service portfolio. Their revenue streams include advertising, subscriptions (heise+), and e-commerce via their shop and price comparison services. The target customers range from IT professionals to general tech-interested users. The company maintains partnerships with related media sites such as Telepolis. The website's content quality and brand consistency support a high level of trust and user engagement.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a solid security foundation with enforced HTTPS and a robust consent management system. Use of modern analytics and personalization tools is balanced with privacy compliance efforts. However, the absence of explicit security headers and publicly available security policies or incident response contacts indicates room for improvement. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the analyzed content. The security score is good but could be enhanced by adopting additional best practices and transparency.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish comprehensive security headers such as CSP, HSTS, and X-Frame-Options.
  2. Provide clear links to privacy policy and terms of service pages in the website footer or header.
  3. Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting.
  4. Include explicit contact information for data protection officer and security incident response.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools to ensure compliance and minimize privacy risks.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Heise Medien
Description
News und Foren zu Computer, IT, Wissenschaft, Medien und Politik. Preisvergleich von Hardware und Software sowie Downloads bei Heise Medien.
Key services
IT news and analysis, Online magazines (ct, iX, c't Fotografie, Mac & i, Make), Forums and community, Price comparison, Software downloads, Subscription services (heise+), Advertising and marketing services
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, JSON-LD, LocalStorage, SVG, Web fonts (woff2), Cloud image CDN (heise.cloudimg.io), Consent Management Platform (Sourcepoint), Kameleoon (A/B testing and personalization), UpScore (recommendation engine), Webtrekk (analytics), InterRed CMS
Frameworks
InterRed CMS
Platforms
Web
Performance
moderate
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Consent management implemented
  • No exposed sensitive data found in HTML
  • Use of async scripts to improve loading

Analytics and tracking

Services
Webtrekk, UpScore, Kameleoon
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Ad networks
UpScore
Tracking pixels
Webtrekk, Kameleoon
Marketing tools
Sourcepoint CMP, Kameleoon
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a professional German IT news and media portal.
  2. Content is rich, well-structured, and updated frequently.
  3. Strong use of modern web technologies and consent management.
  4. No signs of blocking or WAF interference.
  5. No explicit contact emails or phone numbers found in the HTML content.
  6. No explicit privacy policy or terms of service URLs detected in the provided content.
  7. Multiple reputable magazine brands under the same domain.
  8. Use of structured data (JSON-LD) for SEO and content clarity.
  9. Advertising and tracking practices are transparent and use known providers.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern technology stack including InterRed CMS, JavaScript frameworks, SVG graphics, and cloud-based image delivery. Performance is moderate with asynchronous loading of scripts and prefetching of resources. Mobile optimization and accessibility are excellent, supporting a wide range of devices and users. SEO is well addressed through meta tags, Open Graph, and structured JSON-LD data. Hosting is distributed across multiple name servers, indicating a resilient infrastructure. Opportunities exist to enhance security headers and streamline third-party integrations.
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. 82/100Low23 findingsView report
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