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Security report for iabuk.com

IAB UK · Media · United Kingdom

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

70/100

Risk levelMedium

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

IAB UK is a prominent industry body representing the digital advertising sector in the United Kingdom, uniting over 1,200 members including media owners, agencies, and brands. The organization focuses on building a sustainable future for digital advertising through standards development, research, events, and training. Their website reflects a mature digital presence with comprehensive content, clear navigation, and active engagement with their audience via social media and member resources. Technically, the site is built on Drupal 11 and leverages modern JavaScript libraries and Google Tag Manager for analytics and marketing. However, a critical security gap exists due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and HTTPS support, which significantly impacts the site's security posture and trustworthiness. Privacy and cookie policies are present and appear GDPR compliant, supporting responsible data handling practices.

Scanned

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

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 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 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 iabuk.com

This scan found 21 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.

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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
85
Security headers
40
Email security
70
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
43
Average
70

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 IAB UK operates as an essential media industry association with a strong market position in the UK digital advertising ecosystem. Their business model centers on member services, policy advocacy, industry standards, and educational events. The website showcases a broad range of resources, including policy updates, research reports, and sector-specific insights, indicating a well-established partnership ecosystem and thought leadership. The presence of reputable member logos and active social media channels further reinforces their credibility and influence. While the domain registration details are consistent with the organization's identity, the lack of WHOIS data limits deeper verification. Overall, the organization demonstrates a stable and professional operation with growth potential through digital engagement.

Security posture

The website exhibits a basic security posture with some security headers implemented, such as X-Content-Type-Options and X-Frame-Options, which help mitigate common web vulnerabilities. However, the absence of a valid SSL certificate and disabled TLS protocols represent critical vulnerabilities, exposing users to potential data interception and undermining trust. No known vulnerable libraries or exposed sensitive data were detected in the HTML content. The site lacks advanced security features like HSTS, OCSP stapling, and session resumption, which are recommended for modern secure websites. Incident response and security policy information are not publicly available, indicating potential gaps in transparency and preparedness. Addressing these security deficiencies is essential to enhance the overall security posture and user confidence.

Recommendations

  1. Obtain and install a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire website.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and disable deprecated versions to ensure secure communications.
  3. Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with includeSubDomains and preload directives to enforce HTTPS usage.
  4. Enable OCSP stapling to improve certificate revocation checking performance and reliability.
  5. Publish a clear security policy and incident response plan on the website to improve transparency and trust.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Technical notes

Notes

The website is powered by Drupal 11 CMS, indicating a modern and maintainable content management system. It uses a variety of JavaScript libraries including jQuery, Colorbox, and AddEvent for enhanced user experience and functionality. Google Tag Manager is employed for analytics and marketing tag management. The site is hosted behind Cloudflare, providing CDN and some security benefits, although the lack of SSL negates many advantages. Performance metrics are not available, but the presence of multiple scripts and chunked transfer encoding suggests moderate loading times. The site is mobile optimized with responsive design and accessibility features such as skip links and ARIA labels. SEO is supported through canonical links, meta descriptions, and structured navigation. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid but requires SSL implementation and performance optimization.
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. 71/100Medium27 findingsView report
  2. 71/100 +7Medium27 findingsView report
  3. 64/100 −7Medium28 findingsView report
  4. 71/100Medium27 findingsView report
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