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Security report for apnews.com

The Associated Press · Media · United States

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

Security score

76/100

Risk levelLow

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

The Associated Press (AP) is a globally recognized independent news organization with a long-standing history since 1846. It provides fast, accurate, and unbiased news across multiple formats including text, video, and photography. The website demonstrates a strong market position as a leading news agency with a large audience reach worldwide. The business model focuses on news content creation and distribution, supported by advertising and subscription-based services. The technical infrastructure is modern, leveraging a robust CMS (Brightspot), Cloudflare for hosting and security, and various third-party tools for analytics, advertising, and user engagement. However, the website currently suffers from critical SSL certificate issues, lacking valid HTTPS configuration, which poses significant security risks. Despite this, the site maintains comprehensive privacy and cookie policies, indicating good privacy compliance. Overall, the AP website is professional, content-rich, and trustworthy but requires urgent remediation of its SSL and TLS configurations to enhance security and user trust.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of apnews.com. View the latest report

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

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 X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

  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 apnews.com

This scan found 17 issues across 5 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
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  • 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
45
Email security
85
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
43
Average
76

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

AP holds a dominant position in the global media industry, serving a broad audience with diverse news content. Its extensive use of newsletters, video content, and social media integration supports a multi-channel distribution strategy. The presence of multiple advertising networks and marketing tools indicates a mature monetization approach. The domain's long history and consistent registration details reinforce its legitimacy. Partnerships with related domains such as ap.org and official AP blogs strengthen its ecosystem. The business model is primarily content-driven with revenue from advertising and licensing. The target audience includes general news consumers, professionals, and institutions worldwide. Growth indicators include active content updates, multimedia integration, and engagement tools like quizzes and newsletters.

Security posture

The website's security posture is currently weak due to an invalid or missing SSL certificate and absence of supported TLS protocols, which are critical for secure communications. While security headers like HSTS and Content-Security-Policy are present, the lack of proper SSL/TLS undermines these protections. No evidence of exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries was found, but the absence of OCSP stapling and session resumption indicates room for improvement. No explicit incident response or security policy pages were detected. The site uses secure cookie attributes (HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite) which is a positive practice. Immediate action is required to fix SSL/TLS issues to prevent potential data interception and to comply with security best practices.

Recommendations

  1. Urgently obtain and deploy a valid SSL certificate to enable HTTPS and secure user data.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 or 1.3) and disable insecure protocols.
  3. Implement OCSP stapling and session resumption to improve security and performance.
  4. Publish a dedicated security policy and incident response information to enhance transparency.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and advertising networks for security and privacy compliance.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern technology stack including Brightspot CMS, Cloudflare for hosting and CDN, JW Player for video content, and various analytics and marketing tools such as Google Tag Manager, Permutive, OneSignal, Optimizely, and Zephr. The site is well-structured with comprehensive metadata including Open Graph and JSON-LD for SEO and social sharing. It is mobile-optimized and accessible with clear navigation and rich content. However, the SSL/TLS configuration is severely misconfigured, lacking valid certificates and supported protocols, which impacts security and potentially performance. Performance metrics were not available, but the use of CDNs and modern frameworks suggests moderate to good performance. The site integrates multiple advertising and tracking services, indicating a complex but mature digital infrastructure.
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. 78/100 +1Low24 findingsView report
  2. 77/100Low25 findingsView report
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