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Security report for umb.edu

University of Massachusetts Boston · Education · United States

Low risk. 3 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

82/100

Risk levelLow

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

The University of Massachusetts Boston website serves as the official digital presence for a large public university known for its diverse student body and strong social mobility rankings. The site offers comprehensive information on academic programs, campus life, research initiatives, and community engagement, targeting prospective and current students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The university positions itself as a leading institution in diversity and inclusion within the New England region. Technically, the website is built on the Terminalfour CMS platform and integrates multiple modern analytics and marketing tools including Google Analytics, TikTok Pixel, Facebook Pixel, and LinkedIn Insight Tag. The site is mobile-optimized, accessible, and demonstrates good SEO practices. Performance is moderate with room for improvement in loading speed and security header implementation. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS and avoids exposing sensitive data in its HTML content. However, it lacks explicit security headers and a cookie consent mechanism, which are recommended for enhanced security and privacy compliance. The absence of WHOIS data is noted but is typical for .edu domains and does not detract significantly from the site's legitimacy. Overall, the website reflects a professional, trustworthy, and user-friendly platform that effectively supports the university's mission and services. Strategic improvements in security headers and privacy compliance would further strengthen its posture.

Scanned

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

3 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

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

Keep watching umb.edu

This scan found 13 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
100
Security headers
70
Email security
85
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
82

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

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention umb.edu, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
5,063
Employees
417
Customers
1,533
Third parties
3,113
Weak passwords
7%

Latest record dated 2026-06-15 · 89 subdomains affected

See the 10 newest leaked credentials

A one-off add-on to this report that lists the most recent identifier and password pairs OffSeq Breach holds for umb.edu.

Select it in the checkout above.

Masked preview

  • –vm-shibboleth.umb.edu2026-06-15
  • –sts.umb.edu2026-06-13
  • –sts.umb.edu2026-06-13
  • –vm-shibboleth-vcl.umb.edu2026-06-13
  • –sts.umb.edu2026-06-13

Breach keeps ingesting new leaks, so these numbers can grow between scans.

Open in Breach(opens in a new tab)Monitor on Breach(opens in a new tab)

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

UMass Boston operates as a key public higher education institution within the University of Massachusetts system, focusing on delivering accessible education with a strong emphasis on diversity and social mobility. Its market position is reinforced by rankings highlighting its diverse student body and social impact. The university's business model centers on degree programs, research, and community engagement, supported by a large campus and extensive academic offerings. The website's integration with multiple social media and marketing platforms indicates an active digital outreach strategy. Partnerships with internal university domains and alumni networks support its ecosystem. Growth indicators include recent news updates and active program promotion, reflecting ongoing institutional development.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with mandatory HTTPS and no visible exposure of sensitive information. The use of reputable analytics and marketing scripts is balanced with the need for privacy compliance, though the lack of a cookie consent mechanism and security headers presents areas for improvement. No vulnerabilities or malicious content were detected. The absence of explicit incident response or security policy pages suggests an opportunity to enhance transparency and readiness. Overall, the security maturity is good but could benefit from adopting additional best practices to align with GDPR and NIST frameworks.

Recommendations

  1. Implement comprehensive security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security to enhance protection against common web attacks.
  2. Deploy a cookie consent banner/mechanism to comply fully with GDPR and other privacy regulations, improving user trust and legal compliance.
  3. Publish clear security and incident response policies on the website to increase transparency and preparedness.
  4. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and tracking pixels to mitigate risks from external dependencies.
  5. Enhance website performance optimization to improve loading speed and user experience, particularly on mobile devices.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
University of Massachusetts Boston
Description
A public university offering 200+ undergraduate and graduate programs, known for diversity and social mobility, serving a diverse student body in Boston, MA.
Key services
Undergraduate and graduate degree programs, Online and continuing education, Research and sponsored programs, Campus life and student services
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, TikTok Pixel, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, jQuery 3.5.1, Terminalfour CMS
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 analytics and tracking scripts

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Siteimprove Analytics, TikTok Analytics, Facebook Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Tracking pixels
TikTok Pixel, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag
Marketing tools
Siteimprove Analytics
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a professionally designed university homepage with comprehensive academic and campus information.
  2. Strong emphasis on diversity and social mobility.
  3. Multiple official social media channels linked.
  4. Use of modern tracking and analytics tools.
  5. No signs of malicious or suspicious content.
  6. WHOIS data unavailable, typical for .edu domains but reduces transparency.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on the Terminalfour CMS platform, leveraging modern web technologies including asynchronous JavaScript loading for analytics and marketing tags. It uses Google Tag Manager to manage multiple tracking pixels efficiently. The site is mobile responsive with good accessibility features such as skip links and screen reader text. While the HTML structure is valid and SEO optimized with proper meta tags and Open Graph data, performance could be improved by optimizing video loading and reducing third-party script impact. The absence of certain security headers indicates technical debt in security hardening. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid but has room for modernization and enhanced security controls.
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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