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Security report for dfgroup.co.uk

Design Futures · Education · United Kingdom

Medium risk. 7 critical or high findings in DNS health, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

64/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Design Futures is a design research entity affiliated with Sheffield Hallam University, focusing on packaging and product design. The website is currently under redevelopment and serves as a placeholder with links to external university pages and Instagram accounts for its two studios. The technical infrastructure is based on WordPress with common plugins and Google Tag Manager for analytics. The site lacks comprehensive content, privacy policies, and contact information, which limits its business credibility and user trust. Security posture is minimal with no visible security headers or advanced protections. The domain WHOIS data is unavailable due to a naming error, indicating the domain is likely a subdomain rather than a registered domain, which impacts trust in domain legitimacy.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
35/ 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

7 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. DNS health

    DNS sends visitors and email to the right servers. Misconfigured records can cause outages or let someone redirect your traffic.

    • Critical

      DNS Resolution Failed

      Unable to resolve domain A records

      What to do: Verify domain is properly configured and not expired

  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • High

      No Privacy Policy found

      GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

      What to do: Add a comprehensive privacy policy page and link to it prominently

    • 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

    • High

      Third-party services without privacy policy

      Detected services: Google Analytics

      What to do: Document all third-party data sharing in your privacy policy

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

Keep watching dfgroup.co.uk

This scan found 22 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
59
Security headers
80
Email security
70
DNS health
40
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
35
Average
64

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

The business operates as a small academic design research group under Sheffield Hallam University, targeting design professionals and students interested in packaging and product design. Its business model revolves around knowledge exchange and design consultancy within an educational context. The website's minimal content and lack of direct contact details suggest a low digital maturity and limited direct commercial activity. The presence of Instagram accounts indicates some social media engagement. The lack of privacy and cookie policies and absence of detailed business information reduce transparency and user confidence.

Security posture

The website currently exhibits a low security maturity level. There are no detected security headers, no visible SSL/TLS configuration details, and no privacy or cookie policies to indicate compliance with GDPR or other regulations. The absence of contact information for incident response or security policy further weakens the security posture. The use of Google Tag Manager introduces tracking but without visible privacy controls. The domain WHOIS inconsistency adds to the risk profile. Overall, the site requires significant improvements in security and compliance to meet best practices.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish comprehensive privacy and cookie policies to improve GDPR compliance and user trust.
  2. Add clear contact information including emails and phone numbers for business and security incident response.
  3. Configure and verify HTTPS with strong SSL/TLS settings and implement security headers such as CSP, HSTS, and X-Frame-Options.
  4. Clarify domain registration status and consider registering a proper domain to avoid WHOIS inconsistencies and improve legitimacy.
  5. Enhance website content with detailed business information and improve technical SEO and accessibility features.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Design Futures
Description
Design Futures is a design-focused entity associated with two studios specializing in Packaging Design and Product Design. The website is currently under redevelopment and provides links to external Sheffield Hallam University pages and Instagram accounts for both studios.
Key services
Packaging design research and consultancy, Product design research and consultancy
Content quality
basic
Branding
moderate

Technology

Stack
Google Tag Manager, jQuery, Tailwind CSS, FontAwesome, SeedProd plugin
Performance
moderate
Mobile
basic
Accessibility
basic
SEO
basic

Security

Observed score
40/100

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is currently under redevelopment with minimal content.
  2. No privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies found.
  3. No contact emails or phone numbers present on the site.
  4. External links point to Sheffield Hallam University and Instagram accounts.
  5. Uses WordPress CMS with SeedProd plugin for coming soon page.
  6. Includes Google Tag Manager for analytics/tracking.
  7. No security headers or advanced security features detected in HTML content.
  8. WHOIS data unavailable due to domain naming error from Nominet UK.
  9. No forms or data collection fields present on the page.
  10. No evidence of adult or questionable content.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses WordPress CMS with the SeedProd plugin to display a coming soon page. It includes Tailwind CSS for styling and FontAwesome for icons. Google Tag Manager is used for analytics and tracking. The site loads jQuery from WordPress core. The performance is moderate with basic mobile optimization and accessibility. No advanced frameworks or hosting details are evident. The site lacks SEO optimization beyond basic meta tags and Open Graph data. The technical setup is typical for a small informational site but requires modernization and security hardening.
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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