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Security report for thereporterethiopia.com

The Reporter Ethiopia - #1 Top News In Ethiopia - Ethiopian News · Media · Ethiopia

Medium risk. 8 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

59/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The Reporter Ethiopia is a prominent Ethiopian news media organization providing political, business, and general news content primarily targeting Ethiopian audiences. The website positions itself as a leading news source in Ethiopia, offering a mix of articles, videos, and editorial content. The business model revolves around digital news publishing with advertising revenue streams. Technically, the site is built on WordPress CMS with common plugins for SEO, ads management, and performance optimization. The infrastructure shows moderate digital maturity with good mobile optimization and SEO practices but lacks some advanced security headers and privacy compliance features. Security posture is generally good with HTTPS enforced and no obvious vulnerabilities in the HTML content; however, the absence of security headers and privacy policies are notable gaps. The domain WHOIS data is missing, raising concerns about domain registration legitimacy, though the professional site content and social media presence support its credibility. Overall, the site is functional and professional but would benefit from enhanced privacy compliance and security hardening.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
35/ 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

8 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 Privacy Policy found

      GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

      What to do: Add a comprehensive privacy policy page and link to it prominently

    • 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

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

Keep watching thereporterethiopia.com

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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  • 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
65
Security headers
15
Email security
60
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
35
Average
59

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 Reporter Ethiopia holds a strong market position as a leading Ethiopian news outlet with a focus on political and business news. Its competitive advantage lies in localized content and multimedia offerings including video news. The business model is primarily advertising-based, supported by partnerships with related domains for tenders and jobs. The target customer segment is the general Ethiopian public interested in current affairs. Growth indicators include active content updates and social media engagement. The partnership ecosystem includes sister sites for language variants and specialized services. Strategic observations suggest the need for formalizing privacy and security policies to enhance trust and compliance.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security maturity level with HTTPS enabled and no exposed sensitive data in the HTML. However, the lack of security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options reduces its defense-in-depth. No vulnerability disclosure or incident response information is provided, which limits transparency and readiness for security incidents. Privacy compliance is weak due to missing privacy and cookie policies and lack of consent mechanisms. The site uses third-party scripts including Google Analytics and advertising plugins, which require careful monitoring for vulnerabilities. Overall, the security posture is adequate but requires improvements in headers, policies, and incident readiness.

Recommendations

  1. Implement comprehensive privacy and cookie policies with user consent mechanisms to comply with GDPR and other regulations.
  2. Add security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to enhance protection against common web attacks.
  3. Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy and provide clear incident response contact channels to improve security transparency.
  4. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and plugins to mitigate risks from vulnerable libraries.
  5. Enhance accessibility features and conduct periodic security assessments to maintain a strong security culture and trust.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
The Reporter Ethiopia - #1 Top News In Ethiopia - Ethiopian News
Description
The Reporter Ethiopia, best newspaper in Ethiopia We provides Ethiopian Political News in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Business News. Latest Ethiopian News Today
Key services
Ethiopian political news, Ethiopian business news, Latest Ethiopian news, Video news content
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
WordPress, jQuery, WP Rocket, Advanced Ads, Google Analytics, Rank Math SEO, Molongui Authorship, Editor Plus plugin, YellowPencil plugin
Frameworks
WordPress CMS
Platforms
Web
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
80/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Lazy loading scripts for performance

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Ad networks
Advanced Ads
Marketing tools
Google Site Kit
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a professional Ethiopian news media outlet
  2. No WHOIS data available, domain registration status unclear
  3. No explicit privacy or cookie policies found
  4. Uses WordPress CMS with common plugins
  5. HTTPS enabled with Google Analytics and advertising scripts
  6. No security headers detected in provided data
  7. No forms detected in provided HTML content
  8. Contact info limited to phone numbers and physical address in structured data
  9. No incident response or vulnerability disclosure info found
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on WordPress CMS using a modern tech stack including jQuery, WP Rocket for performance, Advanced Ads for monetization, and Rank Math for SEO. The site loads scripts lazily to improve performance and uses Google Analytics for traffic monitoring. Mobile optimization is good with responsive design and mobile-specific menus. SEO is well implemented with meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter cards, and structured JSON-LD data. However, no hosting provider information is discernible from the content. Performance is moderate with room for improvement in caching and script optimization. Technical debt appears low but could be reduced by consolidating plugins and improving security configurations.
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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