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Security report for sdsu.edu

San Diego State University · Education · United States

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

Security score

72/100

Risk levelMedium

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

San Diego State University (SDSU) is a large, well-established public research university founded in 1897, recognized as a leading Hispanic-serving institution. The website serves a broad audience including prospective and current students, faculty, staff, and alumni, offering comprehensive information on academics, admissions, student life, research, and community engagement. The digital presence is professionally designed with consistent branding and rich content, supporting the university's market position as a prominent educational institution in the United States. Technically, the site employs modern web technologies including jQuery, FontAwesome, Google Tag Manager, Microsoft Clarity, and Facebook SDK, integrated within an OmniUpdate CMS environment. The site is mobile optimized, accessible, and SEO friendly, with good performance metrics.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of sdsu.edu. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 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"

  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 sdsu.edu

This scan found 21 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
100
Security headers
30
Email security
70
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
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

SDSU operates multiple campuses and global locations, including SDSU Global Campus, Imperial Valley, Georgia, and Mission Valley, reflecting a broad geographic footprint. The university's business model centers on public education, research funding, and community services, supported by extensive degree programs, student organizations, and athletic teams. The website links to numerous official subdomains and partner sites, indicating a well-integrated digital ecosystem. Marketing and analytics tools are used responsibly with privacy policies in place, supporting moderate user tracking for engagement and improvement purposes. The absence of a public vulnerability disclosure or security.txt file suggests an opportunity for enhanced security transparency.

Security posture

The website enforces HTTPS with an excellent SSL configuration and employs several security best practices, including secure external scripts and no visible sensitive data exposure. However, explicit security headers such as X-Frame-Options and X-Content-Type-Options are not clearly present in the HTML content, representing an area for improvement. No vulnerabilities or malicious indicators were detected. The lack of published incident response contacts or vulnerability disclosure mechanisms limits the site's security transparency and readiness. Overall, the security posture is strong but could benefit from enhanced header implementation and public security policies.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and verify comprehensive security headers including X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, and Referrer-Policy to strengthen browser security.
  2. Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to improve transparency and facilitate responsible reporting.
  3. Provide clear incident response contact information on the website to enhance security communication.
  4. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools to mitigate potential vulnerabilities.
  5. Enhance cookie consent management and security flags to comply with evolving privacy regulations.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
San Diego State University
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
San Diego State University
Description
Since its founding in 1897, the university has grown to become a leading public research university, and a federally-designated Hispanic-serving Institution. Dr. Adela de la Torre is the current president of San Diego State University (SDSU).
Key services
Degree programs, Student organizations and clubs, Athletic teams, Research funding and innovation, Academic support and advising, Global education and study abroad, Community engagement
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
jQuery 3.6.0, FontAwesome 5.15.4, Google Tag Manager, Microsoft Clarity, Facebook SDK, YouTube iframe API, Slick Carousel, OmniUpdate CMS (inferred from URLs and scripts)
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of secure external scripts
  • No visible vulnerable libraries

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, Facebook Pixel
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Facebook Pixel, Microsoft Clarity, Google Analytics (via GTM)
Marketing tools
Facebook SDK, Microsoft Clarity
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a comprehensive, professionally designed university portal
  2. Content is rich with academic, admissions, student life, and research information
  3. Strong presence of official branding and structured data for SEO
  4. Multiple social media and external official domains linked
  5. No signs of phishing, malware, or suspicious content
  6. No visible contact forms collecting sensitive personal data on homepage
  7. Use of modern tracking and analytics tools with privacy policies in place
  8. No explicit security.txt or vulnerability disclosure found
  9. WHOIS data unavailable likely due to .edu domain WHOIS restrictions
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on a modern technology stack with jQuery, FontAwesome, and various analytics and marketing tools integrated via Google Tag Manager. The use of OmniUpdate CMS suggests a robust content management infrastructure tailored for higher education institutions. Performance is moderate with good mobile optimization and accessibility features. The site structure and metadata are well implemented, including JSON-LD structured data for SEO. There is no indication of outdated or vulnerable libraries. Hosting provider details are not explicitly available from the HTML content. Opportunities exist to improve security headers and publish security policies to reduce technical risk.
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. 72/100Medium30 findingsView report
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