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Security report for tower.co.nz

Tower Insurance · Finance · New Zealand

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and SSL/TLS.

Security score

59/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Tower Insurance is a well-established New Zealand-based insurance provider offering a broad range of insurance products including car, house, contents, boat, pet, travel, and business insurance. The company holds a strong market position supported by industry awards such as Canstar's Insurer of the Year and a robust financial strength rating. Their website is professionally designed, mobile-optimized, and provides clear navigation and comprehensive content tailored to New Zealand residents. Technically, the site is built on WordPress with modern frameworks and performance optimizations, leveraging tools like Google Tag Manager and WP Rocket. Security posture is strong with HTTPS enforced and use of sanitization libraries, though some security headers could be improved. Privacy compliance is good with clear privacy and terms policies, though a cookie consent mechanism is not evident. Overall, the website reflects a credible and trustworthy business with a mature digital presence.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
28/ 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. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS encryption

      GDPR requires appropriate security measures for personal data

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate for HTTPS

    • 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

  2. 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.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS Encryption

      Website does not use HTTPS encryption, making all data transmission vulnerable to interception

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS

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

Keep watching tower.co.nz

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

€25per month

  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

Email alerts on material changes and an exportable JSON history of every change.

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Full report

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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
0
Security headers
70
Email security
85
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
28
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

Tower Insurance targets the New Zealand insurance market with a direct-to-consumer online model, offering bundled insurance policies and multi-policy discounts. The company leverages partnerships with industry bodies like the Insurance Council of New Zealand and rating agencies such as Canstar to build trust. Their digital ecosystem includes dedicated domains for pet and travel insurance and a customer portal for policy management. The presence of customer reviews and certifications further strengthens their market credibility. The business model focuses on convenience, transparency, and customer-centric services, supported by a strong brand and long operational history since 1870.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with HTTPS enforced and inclusion of security best practices such as DOMPurify for sanitization and monitoring for CSP violations. However, explicit security headers like X-Frame-Options and X-Content-Type-Options are not clearly present, representing an area for improvement. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the HTML content. Incident response and security policy information are not publicly available, which could be enhanced to improve transparency and readiness. Overall, the security posture is solid but could benefit from additional explicit security policies and headers.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish explicit security headers including X-Frame-Options and X-Content-Type-Options to enhance protection against clickjacking and MIME sniffing.
  2. Add a visible cookie consent banner to comply with privacy regulations and improve user transparency.
  3. Publish a dedicated security policy and incident response contact information to demonstrate security governance and readiness.
  4. Consider establishing a vulnerability disclosure program or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting of security issues.
  5. Regularly review and update third-party scripts and libraries to mitigate risks from vulnerable dependencies.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Tower Insurance
Description
Get a quote and buy insurance online with Tower. Plus, save up to 20% with our multi-policy discount. Compare our policies today.
Key services
Car Insurance, House Insurance, Contents Insurance, Boat Insurance, Pet Insurance, Travel Insurance, Landlord Insurance, Motorbike Insurance, Motorhome Insurance, Business Insurance
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
jQuery, Google Tag Manager, YouTube Iframe API, DOMPurify, WP Rocket (performance optimization)
Frameworks
WordPress, Visual Composer Website Builder
Platforms
WordPress
Performance
fast
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
good
SEO
excellent

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Use of CSP violation event listener
  • Sanitization library DOMPurify included
  • No exposed credentials or sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager)
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Ad networks
Google AdSense, DoubleClick
Tracking pixels
Trustpilot widget
Marketing tools
Yoast SEO Premium, WP Rocket
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is professionally designed and well-structured.
  2. Strong presence of trust signals including awards and customer reviews.
  3. Comprehensive insurance product offerings targeted at New Zealand market.
  4. Good use of modern web technologies and performance optimizations.
  5. No signs of blocking or WAF interference.
  6. Privacy and terms policies are clearly linked and comprehensive.
  7. No explicit cookie consent mechanism detected.
  8. No visible security.txt or vulnerability disclosure policy.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on WordPress using the Visual Composer Website Builder plugin, leveraging jQuery and modern JavaScript libraries. Performance is optimized using WP Rocket with lazy loading of images and scripts. SEO is enhanced with Yoast SEO Premium, and analytics are managed via Google Tag Manager. The site is mobile responsive and accessible with good semantic HTML structure. Hosting provider details are not explicit but the site uses HTTPS with strong SSL configuration. The technical infrastructure supports a fast, secure, and user-friendly experience with room for minor security header enhancements.
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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