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Security report for espn.com.au

ESPN · Media · Australia

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in Security headers, Email security and 1 other check.

Security score

68/100

Risk levelMedium

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

ESPN Australia is a leading sports media platform providing up-to-the-minute sports news, scores, highlights, and commentary tailored for Australian sports fans. The website is part of the globally recognized ESPN brand, owned by The Walt Disney Company, and targets a broad audience of sports enthusiasts in Australia. The platform offers comprehensive coverage of popular sports including AFL, NRL, Rugby, Cricket, and Football. Technically, the site employs modern web technologies such as JavaScript frameworks, service workers, and advanced ad management tools, ensuring a fast, responsive, and user-friendly experience across devices. Privacy and cookie policies are well implemented with consent mechanisms, reflecting good compliance with GDPR and related regulations. Security posture is strong with HTTPS enforcement and use of security best practices, though there is room for improvement in explicit security headers and incident response transparency. Overall, ESPN Australia presents a professional, trustworthy, and technically mature digital presence with minor gaps in WHOIS transparency and security policy disclosures.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
88/ 100 · Low
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

4 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 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
    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

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

  2. Email security

    SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop others sending email that looks like it comes from your domain, a common route to phishing and invoice fraud.

    • High

      No SPF record found

      SPF helps prevent email spoofing

      What to do: Add SPF record: "v=spf1 include:_spf.yourmailprovider.com ~all"

  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

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

Keep watching espn.com.au

This scan found 23 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

€25per month

  • 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
72
Security headers
30
Email security
45
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
88
Average
68

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

ESPN Australia holds a strong market position as a premier sports news provider in the Australian media sector. Leveraging the global ESPN brand and Disney's backing, it benefits from extensive content resources and partnerships. The business model centers on advertising revenue supported by high traffic and engagement from sports fans. The platform integrates advanced advertising technologies and analytics to optimize monetization and user targeting. Its partnership ecosystem includes Disney's CDN and ad networks, enhancing content delivery and monetization capabilities. The site’s focus on localized sports content and digital innovation positions it well for continued growth in the competitive sports media landscape.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with enforced HTTPS, use of service workers, and integration of consent management for privacy compliance. Security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and Referrer-Policy are implied, though explicit header presence could be improved. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the HTML content. However, the absence of a published security policy, incident response contacts, and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms like security.txt represent gaps in transparency and readiness. The site should enhance these areas to improve trust and incident handling capabilities. Overall, the security posture is strong but could benefit from formalized policies and disclosures.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish a security.txt file to facilitate vulnerability reporting.
  2. Add explicit security headers such as Strict-Transport-Security and X-Content-Type-Options.
  3. Provide clear incident response contact information on the website.
  4. Regularly audit third-party scripts and ad technologies for security vulnerabilities.
  5. Enhance accessibility features to meet higher compliance standards.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
ESPN
Description
Visit ESPN to get up-to-the-minute sports news coverage, scores, highlights and commentary for AFL, NRL, Rugby, Cricket, Football and more.
Key services
Sports news, Scores, Highlights, Commentary
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
JavaScript, Prebid.js, Google Publisher Tags, OneTrust Consent Management, Service Workers
Frameworks
Schema.org JSON-LD, New Relic Browser Monitoring
Platforms
Web
Performance
fast
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Service worker registered
  • Consent management for cookies
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
New Relic Browser Monitoring
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Ad networks
Google Ad Manager, Prebid.js, Magnite (disabled)
Tracking pixels
New Relic, Google Tag Services, OneTrust Consent SDK
Marketing tools
OneTrust Consent Management, Google Publisher Tags
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is fully accessible with rich content.
  2. No WAF or blocking detected.
  3. Comprehensive privacy and cookie policies with consent mechanisms.
  4. No explicit security.txt or incident response contacts found.
  5. Use of modern ad and analytics technologies.
  6. Strong branding and consistent design.
  7. WHOIS data limited due to registry policy, no privacy protection but incomplete data.
Technical notes

Notes

The technical infrastructure of ESPN Australia is robust, leveraging modern JavaScript libraries, service workers for offline capabilities, and advanced ad management via Google Publisher Tags and Prebid.js. The site uses JSON-LD structured data for SEO and integrates OneTrust for consent management, reflecting a high level of digital maturity. Hosting appears to be managed via Disney’s CDN infrastructure, ensuring fast content delivery and scalability. Performance is optimized for both desktop and mobile, with responsive design and lazy loading of assets. The site’s technical stack supports a seamless user experience with good SEO and accessibility practices, though CMS details are not explicitly identified. Continuous monitoring and updates are recommended to maintain security and performance 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

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