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Security report for horatioalger.ca

The Horatio Alger Association of Canada, Inc. · Non-profit · Canada

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

Security score

62/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The Horatio Alger Association of Canada is a mature, medium-sized non-profit organization dedicated to providing scholarships and support services to young Canadians overcoming adversity. The website reflects a professional and consistent brand with clear messaging and a focus on education and empowerment. Technically, the site is built on WordPress with common plugins and tracking tools, but suffers from slow load times and lacks a valid SSL certificate, which significantly impacts security posture. Privacy policies are present but lack a cookie consent mechanism, indicating partial compliance with privacy regulations. Overall, the domain registration and WHOIS data align well with the organization's identity, supporting legitimacy. Strategic improvements in security and privacy compliance would enhance trust and user safety.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
43/ 100 · High
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. 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"

  2. GDPR outside view

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

    • 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

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

Keep watching horatioalger.ca

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
50
Security headers
55
Email security
50
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
43
Average
62

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

The organization operates in the non-profit education sector, targeting financially challenged youth across Canada. It has awarded over $17 million in scholarships since 2012 and supports over 1000 current scholars. The business model focuses on charitable fundraising and scholarship distribution, supplemented by mentorship and academic support services. The website's partnership with the US Horatio Alger Association indicates a broader network. The presence of social media and event promotion suggests active engagement and outreach. Growth indicators include recent scholarship application announcements and gala events. The organization maintains a clear Canadian identity with consistent branding and messaging.

Security posture

The current security posture is weak due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and lack of HTTPS support, exposing users to potential data interception risks. No security headers or HSTS are implemented, and the DMARC policy is set to none, which limits email spoofing protection. While SPF records are correctly configured, the lack of OCSP stapling and session resumption support further reduces security robustness. No incident response or security policy pages were found, indicating limited transparency and preparedness. The site uses common analytics and marketing scripts, which increase tracking but are standard for such organizations. Addressing these gaps is critical to protect user data and enhance trust.

Recommendations

  1. Obtain and deploy a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire site immediately.
  2. Implement security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-XSS-Protection, and enable HSTS with subdomains.
  3. Establish a cookie consent mechanism to comply with privacy regulations and improve user transparency.
  4. Develop and publish a security policy and incident response contact information to demonstrate security governance.
  5. Review and tighten DMARC policy to quarantine or reject unauthorized emails and enable reporting.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
The Horatio Alger Association of Canada, Inc.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on WordPress with Yoast SEO and several JavaScript libraries including jQuery. It uses Google Tag Manager and Facebook Pixel for analytics and marketing. Hosting is behind Cloudflare DNS but no SSL termination is detected, indicating a misconfiguration or expired certificate. The site has a large page size (~1.5MB) and slow load time (~12.7 seconds), suggesting optimization opportunities. Accessibility is basic with some ARIA and alt attributes present. SEO is supported by meta tags, Open Graph, and JSON-LD structured data. The site uses Ninja Forms integrated with Salesforce CRM for form handling. Overall, the technical stack is standard but requires performance and security 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

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