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Security report for sciencedirect.com

Other · N/a

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

Security score

72/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The website www.sciencedirect.com is currently inaccessible due to a security challenge or Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection, as indicated by the minimal HTML content and the page title 'Just a moment...'. This prevents extraction of meaningful business, technical, or security information from the page. The WHOIS query for the domain failed to return registration details, which may be due to query restrictions or privacy protection mechanisms. Consequently, no metadata, contact information, or policy documents could be identified. The lack of accessible content and WHOIS data limits the ability to assess the website's technical infrastructure, security posture, or compliance status. Overall, the site appears to be protected by security mechanisms that block automated or high-volume queries, which is common for high-profile domains but restricts external analysis.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
58/ 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 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

  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
    • High

      Weak SSL Key Length

      SSL certificate uses 256-bit key, which is considered weak

      What to do: Use at least 2048-bit RSA or 256-bit ECC key

      • CWE-326
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • Mozilla TLS: Mozilla Server Side TLS 6.0 intermediate: rsa_key_size 2048

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

Keep watching sciencedirect.com

This scan found 20 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
52
Security headers
65
Email security
70
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
58
Average
72

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

Due to the blocked content and missing WHOIS data, no direct business intelligence could be gathered from the website. The domain www.sciencedirect.com is known externally as a major scientific publication platform operated by Elsevier, targeting researchers, academics, and institutions. However, this analysis cannot confirm or extract such details from the provided data. No partner or subsidiary domains were identified, and no contact or trust indicators were found in the accessible content.

Security posture

The security posture cannot be fully evaluated due to the lack of accessible content and HTTP response headers. The presence of a security challenge page suggests that the site employs a WAF or similar protection to mitigate automated access and potential attacks. No security headers or SSL configuration details were available for analysis. The absence of exposed sensitive data or vulnerabilities cannot be confirmed, but the blocking mechanism itself is a positive security control. Incident response and vulnerability disclosure information were not found.

Recommendations

  1. Provide access to a non-blocked version of the site or allow authorized WHOIS queries to enable comprehensive external analysis.
  2. Ensure that privacy and cookie policies are clearly accessible and linked on the main site for compliance verification.
  3. Publish security and incident response policies publicly to enhance trust and transparency.
  4. Implement structured data and metadata to improve SEO and facilitate automated content extraction.
  5. Maintain updated WHOIS records accessible to legitimate queries to support domain legitimacy verification.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Generic detected. The HTML content indicates a security challenge page with title 'Just a moment...' and minimal content, typical of a WAF or security protection mechanism blocking access. These observations may be incomplete. For a fuller analysis, contact guard@offseq.com.

Business

Content quality
poor

Technology

Analytics and tracking

Site quality

Design
poor
User experience
poor
Content relevance
poor
Navigation
poor
Professionalism
poor
Trustworthiness
low

Key observations

  1. Website content is inaccessible due to a security challenge or WAF blocking.
  2. No meaningful metadata, forms, or contact information found in the provided HTML.
  3. WHOIS data is not available or the domain is not found in the WHOIS database, indicating query failure or privacy protection.
  4. No privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies detected in the content.
  5. No scripts, analytics, or external links detected due to blocked content.
  6. Content safety is rated safe as no adult or explicit content is present.
  7. Overall website quality and content quality are poor due to lack of accessible content.
Technical notes

Notes

The technical analysis is limited by the blocked content. The HTML indicates a minimal page likely generated by a security service, with no detectable CMS, frameworks, or analytics scripts. No external links or resources were found in the provided content. Performance, mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO cannot be assessed. The domain's hosting provider and infrastructure details are not available from the data.
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. 73/100Medium26 findingsView report
  2. 73/100Medium26 findingsView report
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