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Security report for wien.at

Stadt Wien · Government · Austria

High risk. 6 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, SSL/TLS and 1 other check.

Security score

49/100

Risk levelHigh

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

Stadt Wien operates the official web portal for the city government of Vienna, Austria, providing comprehensive information and services to residents, visitors, and businesses. The website serves as a central hub for city news, events, administrative services, and contact information, positioning itself as a trusted and authoritative source for municipal matters. The platform targets a broad audience including citizens, tourists, and local enterprises, offering multilingual support and a variety of online tools such as virtual office services and event searches. Technically, the website is built on the Liferay CMS platform, leveraging modern JavaScript libraries like jQuery and Bootstrap for UI components and responsiveness. The infrastructure is hosted by the city's own web gateway, ensuring control over content delivery. While the site demonstrates good accessibility and SEO practices, performance metrics are lacking, and the absence of a valid SSL certificate significantly undermines the site's security posture. From a security perspective, the site implements several HTTP security headers and a content security policy, which are positive indicators. However, the lack of HTTPS and modern TLS protocols, absence of HSTS, and missing OCSP stapling represent critical vulnerabilities that expose users to potential risks. No explicit security or incident response policies are publicly available, and no vulnerability disclosure program or security.txt file was found, indicating room for improvement in transparency and security governance. Overall, Stadt Wien's website is a professionally maintained government portal with strong content and user experience but suffers from critical security shortcomings due to missing SSL/TLS implementation. Addressing these issues is paramount to safeguarding user data and maintaining trust. Strategic recommendations include immediate deployment of a valid SSL certificate, enabling modern TLS protocols, and publishing clear security and incident response policies to enhance compliance and user confidence.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of wien.at. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
0/ 100 · Critical
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

6 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

    • 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

  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

  3. 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

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

Keep watching wien.at

This scan found 16 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

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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
0
Security headers
55
Email security
50
DNS health
90
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
0
Average
49

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

Stadt Wien holds a dominant position as the official digital gateway for Vienna's municipal services, leveraging its government authority to provide essential information and e-government services. The business model focuses on public service delivery rather than commercial revenue, emphasizing accessibility and transparency. The website supports multiple languages to cater to Vienna's diverse population and visitors. Key services include virtual office functions, event listings, city planning information, and contact facilitation. The platform integrates with partner domains such as wien.gv.at and wienerlinien.at, enhancing service breadth. Growth indicators include digital initiatives like 'Mein Wien' and 'Smart City Wien', reflecting a commitment to innovation. The partnership ecosystem is primarily governmental and civic, with no commercial subsidiaries identified. The site’s content and branding are consistent with official government standards, reinforcing credibility and trust.

Security posture

The current security maturity of the Stadt Wien website is moderate but compromised by critical gaps. The presence of security headers and a content security policy indicates awareness of web security best practices. However, the absence of a valid SSL certificate and HTTPS support is a severe vulnerability that exposes users to interception and data tampering risks. The lack of HSTS and modern TLS protocols further weakens transport security. No evidence of incident response readiness or vulnerability disclosure mechanisms reduces transparency and responsiveness to security threats. GDPR compliance is supported by a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie consent mechanism, but the missing security infrastructure undermines overall data protection. The site would benefit from a formalized security policy publication and dedicated security contact channels to improve its security culture and incident management capabilities.

Recommendations

  1. Deploy a valid SSL/TLS certificate immediately to enable HTTPS across the entire site.
  2. Enable and enforce modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).
  3. Publish a clear security policy and incident response plan accessible to users and stakeholders.
  4. Establish a vulnerability disclosure program and provide a security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting.
  5. Enhance performance monitoring and optimization to improve load times and user experience.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Magistrat der Stadt Wien
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on the Liferay CMS platform, utilizing jQuery 3.6.4 and Bootstrap for responsive design and UI components. The infrastructure is managed by the Magistrat der Stadt Wien, indicating in-house hosting. The site employs a comprehensive Content Security Policy and several security headers, reflecting good security hygiene. However, the lack of HTTPS and modern TLS protocols is a significant technical debt and security risk. Performance data is missing, but the absence of SSL may negatively impact loading speed and SEO rankings. Accessibility features such as skip links and ARIA roles are implemented, supporting usability. The site integrates with multiple external domains for analytics, maps, and social media, which are well managed. Overall, the technical stack is modern but requires urgent security upgrades and performance tuning to meet current standards.
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. 64/100Medium30 findingsView report
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