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Security report for westendverlag.de

Westend Verlag · Media · Germany

Medium risk. 5 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, Security headers and 1 other check.

Security score

63/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Westend Verlag is a German publishing company specializing in academic, political, and cultural literature. Their website offers a range of books, eBooks, and media content such as videos and podcasts, targeting readers interested in critical discourse and scholarly works. The business operates primarily through online sales and media distribution, positioning itself as a niche publisher with a focus on quality content and intellectual engagement. Technically, the website is built on a modern e-commerce platform likely Shopware, utilizing Google reCAPTCHA v3 for bot protection and Google Tag Manager for analytics. The site is hosted on German servers with HTTPS enabled, providing a secure browsing experience. The design is professional, mobile-optimized, and offers clear navigation, although some SEO and accessibility features could be enhanced. From a security perspective, the site implements basic best practices such as HTTPS and IP anonymization in analytics but lacks explicit security headers and published security policies. No vulnerability disclosure or incident response contacts are provided, which could be improved to enhance trust and compliance. Privacy compliance is partial, with cookie consent mechanisms active but no dedicated privacy or cookie policy pages detected. Overall, the website is functional, professional, and safe for general audiences, with room for improvement in privacy transparency and security documentation. The domain registration data aligns well with the business profile, indicating legitimacy and consistency.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
43/ 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

5 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

      EU business without adequate privacy measures

      EU businesses are subject to strict GDPR requirements

      What to do: Implement comprehensive GDPR compliance including privacy policy, cookie consent, and data protection measures

    • 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

  2. 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';…
  3. 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.

    • High

      Weak Protocols Supported

      Server supports weak protocols: TLSv1.1

      What to do: Disable TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and all SSL versions

      • CWE-327
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V12.1.1
    • High

      Weak SSL Key Length

      SSL certificate uses 256-bit key, which is considered weak

      What to do: Use at least 2048-bit RSA or 256-bit ECC key

      • CWE-326
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • Mozilla TLS: Mozilla Server Side TLS 6.0 intermediate: rsa_key_size 2048

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

Keep watching westendverlag.de

This scan found 26 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

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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
52
Security headers
60
Email security
55
DNS health
65
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
43
Average
63

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 westendverlag.de, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
25
Employees
0
Customers
24
Third parties
1
Weak passwords
16%

2 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 westendverlag.de.

Select it in the checkout above.

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

Technical appendix

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

Business context

Business profile

Westend Verlag operates in the media sector as a specialized publisher focusing on academic and political literature. Their business model centers on publishing and selling physical books and eBooks, supplemented by multimedia content like podcasts and videos. The target market includes readers interested in critical political analysis, social issues, and cultural topics. The company maintains a niche market position with a consistent brand and quality content. The website supports growth through newsletter subscriptions and showcases new releases and bestsellers, indicating active content management and customer engagement. No parent or subsidiary companies were identified, suggesting an independent operation. The use of German hosting and domain registration supports their local market focus.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security posture with HTTPS enforced and Google reCAPTCHA v3 implemented to mitigate automated abuse. Analytics tracking is configured with IP anonymization, reflecting some privacy awareness. However, the absence of key security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options reduces defense-in-depth. No published security or incident response policies were found, limiting transparency for vulnerability reporting or breach handling. The site does not expose sensitive data or show signs of vulnerable libraries in the scanned content. Overall, the security maturity is adequate for a small publishing business but could be enhanced by adopting additional security headers, publishing a security.txt file, and providing incident response contacts.

Recommendations

  1. Publish a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie policy pages to improve GDPR compliance and user transparency.
  2. Implement and configure security headers like Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to strengthen security posture.
  3. Add a security policy or security.txt file with incident response contact information to facilitate vulnerability disclosure and improve trust.
  4. Enhance accessibility features to meet higher standards and improve user experience for all visitors.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and libraries to ensure no vulnerabilities and maintain up-to-date dependencies.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Westend Verlag
Description
Westend Verlag is a publishing company offering books and media content including videos, podcasts, and comments. They focus on various thematic areas such as politics, society, health, economy, and culture, targeting readers interested in critical and academic literature.
Key services
Book publishing, E-book sales, Media content (videos, podcasts, comments), Newsletter subscription
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Google reCAPTCHA v3, Google Tag Manager, Tiny Slider (tns), CSS3, JavaScript
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
basic

Security

Observed score
75/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enabled
  • Google reCAPTCHA v3 implemented
  • IP anonymization in Google Analytics

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is fully accessible with no blocking or WAF challenges.
  2. No explicit privacy or cookie policy pages found in the provided content.
  3. Cookie consent mechanism is enabled by default but no explicit cookie policy page detected.
  4. Contact information is primarily via contact forms; no explicit emails or phone numbers found.
  5. Website uses HTTPS and Google reCAPTCHA v3 for bot protection.
  6. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure found.
  7. Content is focused on book publishing with a professional design and good navigation.
  8. Google Analytics is used with IP anonymization for privacy.
  9. No suspicious or malicious content detected.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on a modern e-commerce CMS platform, likely Shopware, indicated by the structure of CSS and JS assets and data attributes. It uses Google reCAPTCHA v3 for bot protection and Google Tag Manager for analytics, with IP anonymization enabled. The hosting is provided by a German hosting provider (rzone.de), consistent with the domain's geographic focus. The site is mobile-optimized with responsive design and uses Tiny Slider for carousels. Performance is moderate, with asynchronous loading of scripts and optimized images. SEO is basic with meta tags and Open Graph data present but lacks detailed descriptions and keywords. Accessibility is basic, with some ARIA attributes and semantic HTML but could be improved. Overall, the technical infrastructure supports the business needs but has opportunities for modernization and enhanced security.
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. 65/100Medium32 findingsView report
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