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Security report for fca.org.uk

Financial Conduct Authority · Finance · United Kingdom

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

71/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the UK's independent financial regulatory body responsible for overseeing financial services firms and markets to ensure consumer protection and market integrity. The website serves as a comprehensive portal for consumers, firms, and stakeholders, offering regulatory guidance, firm authorisation information, consumer alerts, and access to various FCA systems. The FCA operates with a clear mandate to promote competition, protect consumers, and enhance market integrity, funded through fees charged to the financial services industry. Technically, the FCA website is built on Drupal 10, leveraging modern web technologies including Google Tag Manager and New Relic for performance monitoring. The site demonstrates good mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO practices, providing a professional and user-friendly experience. Security is robust with HTTPS enforced and cookie consent mechanisms in place, although explicit HTTP security headers and a published security policy could enhance the posture further. Despite the absence of WHOIS registration details due to domain naming restrictions, the website's legitimacy is strongly supported by consistent branding, official contact information, and trust indicators such as the Plain Language Commission Gold Award. No security vulnerabilities or suspicious activities were detected in the content or technical configuration. Overall, the FCA website represents a high-quality, authoritative resource for financial regulation in the UK, with strong business credibility and a solid security foundation. Strategic recommendations include enhancing security header implementation, publishing explicit security and incident response policies, and maintaining vigilance on third-party scripts to sustain trust and compliance.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
68/ 100 · Medium
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 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';…

  2. GDPR outside view

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

    • 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

  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 fca.org.uk

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

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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
50
Email security
85
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
68
Average
71

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 FCA holds a dominant position as the UK's primary financial regulator, overseeing a broad spectrum of financial services firms and markets. Its business model is regulatory and fee-based, targeting financial firms and consumers. The website supports this model by providing extensive resources, regulatory updates, and tools such as the FCA Firm Checker and My FCA portal. The FCA's partnership ecosystem includes social media channels and dedicated systems like RegData and Connect. Growth indicators include active consumer engagement, frequent news updates, and strategic initiatives like Consumer Duty. The FCA's operations emphasize transparency, consumer protection, and market integrity, positioning it as a trusted authority in the financial sector.

Security posture

The FCA website exhibits a mature security posture with enforced HTTPS, cookie consent mechanisms, and secure form handling implied by Drupal CMS. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were identified. However, the absence of explicit HTTP security headers such as Content Security Policy (CSP), HSTS, and X-Frame-Options suggests room for improvement. The lack of a published security policy or incident response contact limits transparency in security governance. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure program was detected. Overall, the site maintains good security hygiene but would benefit from enhanced header configurations and formalized security disclosures to align with best practices.

Recommendations

  1. Implement comprehensive HTTP security headers including CSP, HSTS, and X-Frame-Options to mitigate common web vulnerabilities.
  2. Publish a clear security policy and incident response procedures on the website to improve transparency and stakeholder trust.
  3. Establish and publicize a vulnerability disclosure program, including a security.txt file, to facilitate responsible reporting.
  4. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and analytics tools to prevent supply chain vulnerabilities.
  5. Enhance monitoring and logging capabilities to detect and respond to security incidents promptly.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Financial Conduct Authority
Registration number
01920623
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Financial Conduct Authority
Description
The Financial Conduct Authority is a financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom, but operates independently of the UK Government, and is financed by charging fees to members of the financial services industry.
Key services
Regulation of financial services firms and markets, Consumer protection, Market integrity enforcement, Authorisation and supervision of firms, Publication of guidance and policy, Consumer education and warnings
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal 10, Google Tag Manager, jQuery UI, New Relic Browser monitoring
Frameworks
Drupal CMS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Cookie consent mechanism implemented
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Secure forms with CSRF tokens (implied by Drupal)

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Tag Manager, New Relic Browser
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is fully accessible with rich content and navigation
  2. Strong presence of official regulatory information and resources
  3. Comprehensive contact and social media information
  4. Use of modern web technologies and analytics
  5. No signs of malicious or suspicious activity
  6. Cookie consent and privacy policies are implemented
  7. WHOIS data unavailable due to domain registration rules but site legitimacy is high
Technical notes

Notes

The FCA website is built on a modern Drupal 10 CMS platform, utilizing Google Tag Manager for analytics and New Relic Browser for performance monitoring. The site demonstrates good mobile responsiveness and accessibility features, with structured data (JSON-LD) enhancing SEO and content discoverability. Performance is moderate, with room for optimization in loading times. The technical infrastructure appears robust and well-maintained, supporting a large-scale, content-rich regulatory website. Opportunities exist to improve security headers and streamline third-party dependencies to reduce technical risk.
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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