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Security report for upenn.edu

University of Pennsylvania · Education · United States

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

Security score

74/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The University of Pennsylvania website represents a large, prestigious Ivy League educational institution with a strong focus on academics, research, healthcare, and community engagement. The site provides extensive content targeting students, faculty, alumni, and the general public, showcasing news, events, and institutional priorities. Technically, the website is built on Drupal 10, leveraging modern web technologies including Google Analytics and Tag Manager for tracking and performance insights. The site is mobile-optimized, accessible, and well-structured, providing a professional user experience. From a security perspective, the website enforces HTTPS and appears to follow good security practices, though explicit security headers are not clearly visible in the HTML content. Privacy policies are comprehensive and GDPR compliant, but cookie consent mechanisms are not evident, which could be improved. The WHOIS data is unavailable, which is common for .edu domains, but the domain and content strongly indicate legitimacy. Contact information including phone numbers and physical addresses are clearly provided, enhancing trust. Overall, the website demonstrates a mature digital presence with strong business credibility and a solid security posture. Recommendations include enhancing visible security headers, implementing cookie consent, and publishing incident response and vulnerability disclosure information to further improve transparency and compliance.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of upenn.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

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 upenn.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
85
Security headers
50
Email security
75
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
74

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 upenn.edu, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
55,321
Employees
142
Customers
47,644
Third parties
7,535
Weak passwords
12%

Latest record dated 2026-06-10 · 453 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 upenn.edu.

Select it in the checkout above.

Masked preview

  • –office365.password.isc.upenn.edu2026-06-10
  • –emailapps.sas.upenn.edu2026-06-10
  • –ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu2026-06-10
  • –pennkey.upenn.edu2026-06-09
  • –my-pitchbook-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu2026-06-06

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

The University of Pennsylvania holds a strong market position as a leading Ivy League university with diversified academic offerings and research initiatives. Its business model is non-profit, focused on education and research services. The university targets a broad audience including prospective and current students, faculty, researchers, alumni, and the public. The website reflects a well-established brand with consistent messaging and trust signals such as official social media links and detailed policies. Growth indicators include active news and event updates and strategic priorities like sustainability and innovation. The partnership ecosystem includes academic and research collaborations, though no explicit partner domains were identified in the HTML content.

Security posture

The website exhibits a good security maturity level with HTTPS enforced and no visible exposure of sensitive data. Use of Google Analytics and Tag Manager is standard but requires ongoing monitoring for privacy compliance. The absence of explicit security headers in the HTML is a minor gap. No incident response or vulnerability disclosure information is publicly available, which is a compliance gap. The site lacks a cookie consent mechanism, which may impact GDPR compliance. Overall, the security posture is solid but could be enhanced by publishing security policies and implementing additional headers and consent mechanisms.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and explicitly configure security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  2. Add a visible cookie consent banner or mechanism to comply with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
  3. Publish detailed incident response and vulnerability disclosure policies to improve transparency and trust.
  4. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools to ensure no vulnerabilities or privacy issues.
  5. Enhance visibility of data protection officer contact information and security-related policies.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
University of Pennsylvania
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
University of Pennsylvania
Description
The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional education across multiple disciplines including natural sciences, social sciences, business, law, health, and medicine. The university emphasizes research, innovation, and community engagement.
Key services
Undergraduate and graduate education, Research and innovation, Athletics and recreation, Community engagement, Health and medicine services
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal 10, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Fonts
Frameworks
Drupal CMS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of secure cookies (implied)
  • No vulnerable libraries detected in scripts

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a professionally maintained university site with extensive content.
  2. No signs of WAF or blocking mechanisms.
  3. WHOIS data is unavailable, typical for .edu domains.
  4. Strong presence of official social media and contact information.
  5. Good use of modern web technologies and analytics.
  6. Privacy and nondiscrimination policies are clearly stated.
  7. No cookie consent mechanism detected, which may be an area for improvement.
  8. No explicit security incident response or vulnerability disclosure information found.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Drupal 10 CMS, a modern and widely supported platform suitable for large institutional websites. It uses Google Fonts for typography and Google Analytics and Tag Manager for analytics and marketing. The site is mobile-optimized and accessible with skip links and ARIA roles. Performance appears moderate with asynchronous loading of analytics scripts. The site uses canonical URLs and meta tags for SEO. There is no evidence of outdated or vulnerable libraries in the provided HTML. Hosting provider details are not explicit. Overall, the technical infrastructure is robust with opportunities for further optimization in security headers and privacy compliance.
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. 74/100Medium29 findingsView report
  2. 74/100Medium29 findingsView report
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