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Security report for hws-halle.de

Hallesche Wasser und Stadtwirtschaft GmbH · Energy · Germany

Medium risk. 5 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

65/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Hallesche Wasser und Stadtwirtschaft GmbH is a regional utility company based in Halle, Germany, providing essential municipal services including water supply, wastewater management, waste disposal, and city cleaning primarily targeting private customers. The company operates as part of the larger SWH Gruppe, which encompasses multiple related entities in energy, transportation, and municipal services. Their website reflects a structured and comprehensive presentation of services, targeting local residents and businesses with clear navigation and service menus. Technically, the website employs modern frontend technologies such as jQuery, FontAwesome, and Slick Carousel, alongside privacy-conscious tools like Usercentrics for consent management and Matomo for analytics. The site is mobile optimized and demonstrates moderate performance and accessibility standards. However, some security headers are not explicitly detected, and there is no visible security policy or incident response information. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS and uses consent management, but lacks published security policies and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were found in the provided content. The WHOIS data aligns well with the website's claims, indicating a legitimate and trustworthy domain registration. Overall, the website presents a professional and trustworthy digital presence for a municipal utility provider, with room for improvement in security policy transparency and enhanced privacy compliance documentation.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
68/ 100 · Medium
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

5 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"

    • 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

  3. 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.

    • High

      Weak Protocols Supported

      Server supports weak protocols: TLSv1.1

      What to do: Disable TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and all SSL versions

      • CWE-327
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V12.1.1

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

Keep watching hws-halle.de

This scan found 25 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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Recommended

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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
62
Security headers
20
Email security
70
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
68
Average
65

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 company holds a strong regional market position as a municipal utility provider serving Halle and surrounding areas. Their business model focuses on providing essential services such as water supply, wastewater treatment, waste collection, and city cleaning. Revenue streams likely derive from service fees, billing, and container rentals. The target customer segment is primarily private customers and local residents. The company benefits from being part of the SWH Gruppe, which provides a broad partnership ecosystem and operational synergies. The website's structured content and multiple related domains indicate a mature and organized corporate structure with clear service offerings and customer support channels.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security maturity level with HTTPS enforcement and consent management via Usercentrics. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected. However, the absence of explicit security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options suggests room for improvement. There is no visible security policy or incident response contact information, which are important for compliance and customer trust. The lack of a vulnerability disclosure or security.txt file limits transparency. Overall, the security posture is adequate for a municipal utility website but could be enhanced by adopting additional best practices and publishing relevant policies.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and enforce security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to mitigate common web vulnerabilities.
  2. Publish a comprehensive security policy and incident response contact information on the website to improve transparency and customer trust.
  3. Introduce a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting of security issues.
  4. Enhance privacy compliance by publishing a detailed privacy policy and terms of service pages, ensuring GDPR alignment.
  5. Regularly audit and update third-party libraries and scripts to avoid potential vulnerabilities and maintain performance.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Hallesche Wasser und Stadtwirtschaft GmbH
Description
Provider of water supply, wastewater management, waste disposal, and city cleaning services primarily for private customers in Halle, Germany.
Key services
Water supply (Trinkwasser), Wastewater management (Abwasser), Waste disposal and recycling (Entsorgung/Reinigung), Container rental and waste collection, Customer service and billing
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
jQuery, jQuery UI, FontAwesome 5.15.4, Slick Carousel, Usercentrics Consent Management, Matomo Analytics
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
basic

Security

Observed score
75/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Consent management via Usercentrics
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Matomo
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Matomo
Marketing tools
Usercentrics Consent Management
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is fully accessible with no blocking or WAF challenges.
  2. Content is comprehensive for private customers of municipal water and waste services.
  3. Consent management is implemented via Usercentrics.
  4. No explicit privacy policy or terms of service pages detected in provided content.
  5. Contact information is clearly provided with multiple phone numbers and a contact form link.
  6. Multiple related domains indicate a well-structured corporate group.
  7. Use of Matomo analytics suggests privacy-conscious tracking.
  8. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure found.
  9. No data protection officer contact found in content.
  10. Website uses modern frontend libraries and is mobile optimized.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern frontend technology stack including jQuery, jQuery UI, FontAwesome, and Slick Carousel, indicating a mature but somewhat traditional web development approach. The presence of Usercentrics for consent management and Matomo for analytics reflects attention to privacy and data protection. The CMS appears to be SixCMS, a specialized content management system. The site is mobile optimized with responsive CSS breakpoints and accessible navigation menus. Performance is moderate, with asynchronous loading of scripts and deferred execution. There is no evidence of advanced frameworks like React or Angular. Technical risks include missing security headers and potential technical debt from legacy libraries. Opportunities exist to modernize the stack and improve accessibility and SEO features.
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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