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Security report for pbs.org

PBS · Media · United States

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

Security score

77/100

Risk levelLow

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

PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) is a prominent non-profit media organization in the United States that provides educational, cultural, and news programming through television and online streaming. The website offers a rich catalog of shows, documentaries, and news content targeting a broad general audience interested in quality public broadcasting. The organization maintains a strong market position as a trusted source of information and entertainment, supported by sponsorships, donations, and government funding. Technically, the PBS website is built on modern web technologies including React and Next.js, ensuring fast performance, mobile optimization, and good accessibility. The site employs Google Tag Manager and DoubleClick for advertising and analytics, with appropriate privacy and cookie policies in place. The technical infrastructure reflects a mature digital presence with good SEO and user experience. From a security perspective, PBS enforces HTTPS with strong security headers and content security policies. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected. However, the WHOIS data is unavailable or malformed, likely due to privacy protection, which is justified for a large non-profit entity. The site lacks explicit public security policies or incident response contacts, which could be improved. Overall, PBS presents a trustworthy, professional, and secure online presence with comprehensive content and strong compliance with privacy standards. The risk level is low, but recommendations include enhancing security transparency and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of pbs.org. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
73/ 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

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"

    • 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 pbs.org

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
100
Security headers
15
Email security
87
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
73
Average
77

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 pbs.org, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
12,488
Employees
0
Customers
12,401
Third parties
87
Weak passwords
7%

47 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 pbs.org.

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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

PBS operates as a large non-profit media entity focused on public broadcasting. Its competitive advantage lies in its established brand, extensive content library, and trusted reputation. Revenue streams include sponsorships, donations, and government support rather than commercial advertising. The target customer segment is the general public seeking educational and cultural programming. PBS maintains partnerships with various educational and cultural organizations and has a broad ecosystem including PBS KIDS and PBS LearningMedia. Growth indicators include digital streaming expansion and social media engagement. Strategic observations highlight the importance of maintaining trust and compliance in a public-facing media environment.

Security posture

PBS demonstrates a mature security posture with enforced HTTPS, comprehensive security headers, and no visible vulnerabilities in the website content. Privacy policies and cookie consent mechanisms are well implemented, supporting GDPR compliance. However, the absence of a public security policy or incident response contact reduces transparency. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure page was found. The use of third-party scripts like Google Tag Manager and DoubleClick is standard but requires ongoing monitoring for security risks. Overall, PBS's security maturity is high but could benefit from enhanced public security governance documentation.

Recommendations

  1. Publish a dedicated security policy page outlining security practices and compliance.
  2. Implement and publicize a vulnerability disclosure program with a security.txt file.
  3. Provide explicit incident response contact information for security issues.
  4. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts to mitigate supply chain risks.
  5. Enhance transparency around data retention and user privacy practices.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
PBS
Description
PBS is a public broadcasting service offering full episodes of dramas, news analysis, documentaries on history, science, art, and more.
Key services
Broadcasting educational TV shows, Streaming full episodes online, Providing news and documentary content, Offering PBS Passport for extended content access
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
React, Next.js, Google Tag Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers, Sentry
Frameworks
React, Next.js
Platforms
Web
Performance
fast
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
90/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Secure cookies
  • Content Security Policy implemented
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Ad networks
Google DoubleClick
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is fully accessible with rich content and no blocking detected.
  2. Strong presence of privacy and terms policies with clear links.
  3. No exposed sensitive data or obvious security vulnerabilities found.
  4. Use of modern web technologies and frameworks.
  5. Comprehensive social media integration and external partnerships.
  6. No suspicious or malicious domains linked.
  7. No adult or NSFW content detected.
  8. WHOIS data is unavailable or malformed, but this is common for large organizations using privacy protection.
Technical notes

Notes

The PBS website uses a modern React and Next.js framework, enabling server-side rendering and fast page loads. The site is mobile-optimized with responsive design and accessibility features. Google Tag Manager and DoubleClick are integrated for analytics and advertising. The site uses multiple CSS stylesheets and asynchronous JavaScript loading to optimize performance. No CMS was explicitly detected, suggesting a custom or proprietary content management solution. Hosting provider details are not evident from the HTML. The technical implementation is robust with good SEO and metadata usage, including JSON-LD structured data for organization and search actions.
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. 77/100 +9Low24 findingsView report
  2. 68/100Medium25 findingsView report
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