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Security report for scdhhs.gov

South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services · Government · United States

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

Security score

73/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) operates the Healthy Connections Medicaid program, providing health coverage to eligible residents of South Carolina. The website serves as a comprehensive portal for Medicaid members, providers, and partners, offering detailed information on eligibility, provider enrollment, claims, communications, and legal notices. The site is well-branded and consistent with government standards, targeting a broad audience including Medicaid recipients and healthcare providers. Technically, the site is built on Drupal 10 and utilizes modern monitoring and analytics tools such as New Relic and Google Tag Manager. However, the site currently lacks a valid SSL certificate, resulting in no HTTPS support, which is a critical security concern. Security headers like SPF and DMARC are configured, but DNSSEC and CAA are missing, and no advanced TLS protocols are enabled. Privacy compliance is partial, with a privacy policy present but no cookie consent mechanism detected. Contact information is clearly provided, enhancing business credibility. Overall, the site is functional and professional but requires urgent security improvements to protect user data and comply with best practices.

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 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 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 scdhhs.gov

This scan found 18 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.

Daily monitoring

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
85
Security headers
40
Email security
85
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
43
Average
73

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

SCDHHS holds a key position as the state government agency responsible for Medicaid administration in South Carolina. Its business model is government-funded healthcare provision, focusing on Medicaid eligibility and provider services. The website supports multiple user segments including members, providers, and partners, with clear navigation and relevant content. The agency leverages partnerships with SC.GOV and government job portals, and uses cloud-based newsletter services. The site’s content and structure indicate a mature digital presence, though the lack of HTTPS may impact user trust and accessibility. The agency’s communications and updates sections suggest active engagement with stakeholders. No commercial revenue streams or affiliate programs are evident, consistent with its government role.

Security posture

The security posture of the website is currently weak due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and lack of HTTPS support, exposing users to potential data interception risks. While SPF and DMARC records are properly configured to protect email domains, the lack of DNSSEC and CAA records reduces DNS security. No HSTS policy or OCSP stapling is implemented, and TLS protocols are disabled, indicating outdated or misconfigured SSL/TLS settings. No explicit security policies or incident response contacts are published on the site, limiting transparency and preparedness. The site uses modern monitoring tools like New Relic, which may aid in detecting runtime issues. Immediate remediation of SSL/TLS configuration and publication of security policies are recommended to enhance trust and compliance.

Recommendations

  1. Obtain and install a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire site.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and disable deprecated protocols.
  3. Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with includeSubDomains and preload directives.
  4. Add DNSSEC and CAA DNS records to improve DNS security and certificate issuance control.
  5. Publish a dedicated security policy and incident response contact information on the website.
  6. Implement a cookie consent mechanism to comply with privacy regulations and improve user transparency.
  7. Regularly audit and update security headers and monitor for vulnerabilities in third-party libraries.
  8. Enhance privacy compliance by detailing data retention policies and user data handling practices.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Technical notes

Notes

The website is powered by Drupal 10 CMS, indicating a modern and supported content management platform. It uses Google Tag Manager for analytics and marketing, and New Relic for performance monitoring. Hosting is on Amazon AWS infrastructure, as indicated by the IP address. The site loads slowly (over 13 seconds) and has a large page size (~700 KB) with many resources (112), suggesting optimization opportunities. Mobile optimization and accessibility are good, with responsive design and ARIA landmarks. SEO is supported by canonical and shortlink tags, meta viewport, and structured navigation. However, the lack of HTTPS and invalid SSL configuration is a critical technical flaw. The site uses multiple external domains for fonts, analytics, social media, and newsletter services, all reputable. JavaScript libraries and monitoring scripts are loaded asynchronously to improve performance. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid but requires urgent security 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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