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Security report for hochschule-ruhr-west.de

Hochschule Ruhr West · Education · Germany

Medium risk. 7 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, Security headers and 1 other check.

Security score

54/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Hochschule Ruhr West (HRW) is a public university of applied sciences located in the Ruhr region of Germany, with campuses in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Bottrop. The institution offers a broad range of degree programs including bachelor, master, part-time, and dual studies, supported by active research institutes and entrepreneurship initiatives. The website reflects a well-established regional educational institution with a clear focus on accessibility, student services, and community engagement. The target audience includes prospective and current students, academic staff, and regional business partners. Technically, the website is hosted on Amazon AWS infrastructure and uses modern web technologies including TLS 1.3, Cookiebot for GDPR-compliant cookie management, Google Tag Manager for analytics, and lazy loading for images. The CMS appears to be Ibexa, supporting a structured and multilingual content presentation. Performance is moderate with a page load time of approximately 4.8 seconds and a page size of 335KB, indicating room for optimization. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS with strong cipher suites and has SPF and DMARC records configured with reject policies, enhancing email security. However, it lacks HSTS, OCSP stapling, and advanced security headers like CSP, which are recommended for improved security posture. No known vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected. Privacy compliance is strong, with a comprehensive privacy policy and an active cookie consent mechanism. Overall, HRW's website demonstrates a mature digital presence with good content quality, technical implementation, and privacy compliance. Strategic improvements in security headers and performance optimization could further enhance the site's security and user experience.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of hochschule-ruhr-west.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

7 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

  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 Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

    • 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';…

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Keep watching hochschule-ruhr-west.de

This scan found 22 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
67
Security headers
15
Email security
50
DNS health
85
Network security
90
GDPR outside view
18
Average
54

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 hochschule-ruhr-west.de, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
2
Employees
0
Customers
2
Third parties
0
Weak passwords
0%

2 subdomains affected

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

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Technical appendix

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

Business context

Business profile

HRW positions itself as a key regional educational institution in the Ruhr area, offering diverse academic programs and research opportunities. Its business model is focused on public education and research funding, with partnerships evident through linked portals and services. The institution leverages digital tools for student engagement and marketing, including social media and events. The presence of entrepreneurship and startup support indicates a focus on innovation and regional economic development. The website's comprehensive navigation and content structure support a broad target audience, including students, academic staff, and external partners.

Security posture

The website exhibits a solid baseline security posture with enforced HTTPS, valid SSL certificates, and email authentication via SPF and DMARC with strict reject policies. The use of Cookiebot ensures GDPR-compliant cookie consent management. However, the absence of HSTS, OCSP stapling, and security.txt files indicates areas for improvement. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive information were found. The site uses third-party scripts such as Google Tag Manager and Cookiebot, which are industry-standard but require ongoing monitoring for privacy compliance. Incident response and security policy documentation are not publicly available, which could be enhanced to improve transparency and readiness.

Recommendations

  1. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with includeSubDomains and preload to enforce HTTPS and prevent downgrade attacks.
  2. Implement OCSP stapling to improve SSL certificate revocation checking and reduce latency.
  3. Add security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to mitigate common web vulnerabilities.
  4. Publish a security.txt file to facilitate responsible vulnerability disclosure and improve incident response communication.
  5. Optimize website performance to reduce load times, enhancing user experience and SEO.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on the Ibexa CMS platform, hosted on AWS infrastructure, and uses modern TLS protocols (1.3 and 1.2) with strong cipher suites. It employs Cookiebot for cookie consent and Google Tag Manager for analytics, indicating a mature approach to privacy and tracking. The site is mobile-optimized with good accessibility features and SEO metadata. Performance is moderate, with potential improvements in resource loading and caching. DNS configuration lacks DNSSEC and CAA records, which could enhance DNS security. Overall, the technical stack supports a robust and compliant educational website but could benefit from enhanced security headers and performance tuning.
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. 60/100Medium30 findingsView report
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