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Security report for hwk-aachen.de

Handwerkskammer Aachen · Education · Germany

High risk. 6 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, SSL/TLS and 1 other check.

Security score

49/100

Risk levelHigh

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

Handwerkskammer Aachen is a regional chamber of crafts in Germany representing approximately 17,400 member businesses. The organization provides a broad range of services including vocational training, further education, consulting, business start-up support, and expert services. The website reflects a well-established institution with a strong market position in the education and government sectors, targeting apprentices, craftsmen, business founders, and companies within the Aachen region. The content is rich, professionally presented, and highly relevant to its audience. Technically, the site is built on the ODAV CMS platform, utilizing modern JavaScript libraries and frameworks, but suffers from poor SSL/TLS implementation, lacking a valid certificate and modern encryption protocols. This significantly impacts the security posture of the website. Privacy compliance is well addressed with clear cookie consent mechanisms and a comprehensive privacy policy. Contact information is complete and transparent, enhancing business credibility. Overall, the website is trustworthy and professional but requires urgent security improvements to protect user data and maintain trust.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
0/ 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

6 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

    • Critical

      No HTTPS encryption

      GDPR requires appropriate security measures for personal data

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate for HTTPS

    • 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. SSL/TLS

    TLS encrypts the connection and proves the site is really yours. Weak or expiring certificates trigger browser warnings and put traffic at risk.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS Encryption

      Website does not use HTTPS encryption, making all data transmission vulnerable to interception

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS

  3. 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';…

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Keep watching hwk-aachen.de

This scan found 17 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
0
Security headers
60
Email security
50
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
0
Average
49

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 Handwerkskammer Aachen operates as a non-profit essential entity serving the craft sector in the Aachen region. Its business model focuses on education, certification, and advisory services, supported by multiple subsidiaries and partner organizations. The website demonstrates a mature digital presence with extensive content, social media integration, and partner affiliations. Revenue streams likely derive from membership fees, training courses, certifications, and consulting services. The target customer segments include apprentices, craftsmen, business founders, and educational institutions. Growth indicators include active event listings, course offerings, and digital tools such as online contract management. The partnership ecosystem is robust, including regional and national craft organizations and diversity initiatives. Strategic observations suggest a strong regional influence with opportunities to enhance digital security and expand online services.

Security posture

The current security maturity level of the website is low due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and lack of TLS protocol support, exposing users to potential data interception and man-in-the-middle attacks. While some security headers are implemented, critical protections like X-XSS-Protection are disabled. There is no evidence of incident response or vulnerability disclosure policies, which limits the organization's readiness to handle security incidents. GDPR compliance is supported through privacy policies and cookie consent, but the weak transport security undermines overall data protection. The business impact of these vulnerabilities is significant, risking user trust and regulatory penalties. Security culture indicators are limited to basic header implementations without advanced protections or transparency measures.

Recommendations

  1. Install and maintain a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS and protect data in transit.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 or 1.3) and configure strong cipher suites to enhance encryption strength.
  3. Activate OCSP stapling and session resumption to improve security and performance.
  4. Enable or replace X-XSS-Protection header with Content Security Policy to mitigate cross-site scripting risks.
  5. Develop and publish an incident response and vulnerability disclosure policy to improve security transparency and readiness.
  6. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and libraries to avoid vulnerabilities.
  7. Enhance security headers with additional protections such as Content Security Policy and Referrer-Policy adjustments.
  8. Improve performance metrics by optimizing resource loading and caching strategies.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Technical notes

Notes

The website is hosted on Apache server infrastructure with DNS managed by relaix.net. It uses the ODAV Content Management System version 1.23.1, combined with jQuery 3.7.1 and Bootstrap CSS for responsive design. Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are integrated for user tracking and analytics. Cookie consent is managed by Klaro. The site includes embedded YouTube videos and external links to partner and subsidiary domains. Despite a modern tech stack, the site lacks a valid SSL certificate and does not support any TLS protocols, severely impacting security and potentially performance. Accessibility and SEO are well addressed with proper meta tags, language attributes, and ARIA roles. The site is mobile optimized and has clear navigation structures. Performance data is missing but inferred to be moderate to slow due to chunked transfer encoding and lack of caching directives. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid but requires urgent security upgrades 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

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