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Security report for leadersaward.com

Primary Engineer · Education · United Kingdom

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

Security score

62/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Leaders Award is a UK-based educational initiative focused on promoting STEM education through an annual competition and free teaching resources. The platform targets teachers, parents, and pupils aged 3-19, providing curriculum-aligned materials and celebrating participation with personalized certificates. The website is professionally designed, mobile-optimized, and integrates modern web technologies including WordPress, Google Analytics, and Facebook Pixel for analytics and marketing. The domain has been active since 2009, reflecting a mature and established presence in the STEM education sector. Security measures include HTTPS, cookie consent with granular controls, and spam protection via Google reCAPTCHA, though improvements in security headers and DNSSEC are recommended. Privacy compliance is strong with a comprehensive cookie policy and GDPR adherence. Overall, the website demonstrates high business credibility and trustworthiness with clear social media engagement and partnership with Primary Engineer.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
65/ 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

7 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"

    • 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 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

      Third-party services without privacy policy

      Detected services: Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google APIs

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

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

Keep watching leadersaward.com

This scan found 26 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

Email alerts on material changes and an exportable JSON history of every change.

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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
42
Security headers
15
Email security
75
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
65
Average
62

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 website operates as a non-profit educational platform delivering STEM competitions and resources fully funded for UK schools and home-educated groups. Its competitive advantage lies in its long-standing history, comprehensive resource offerings, and strong community engagement through social media and partnerships. The business model focuses on educational outreach and public engagement rather than direct revenue generation. Growth indicators include active campaigns like teacher nominations and public voting for prototypes. The partnership ecosystem is centered around Primary Engineer and industry supporters, enhancing credibility and reach.

Security posture

The website maintains a good security posture with enforced HTTPS, clientTransferProhibited domain status, and cookie consent mechanisms. However, DNSSEC is not enabled, and several recommended security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Content-Type-Options are missing. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the HTML content. The absence of a security policy or vulnerability disclosure page suggests room for improvement in incident response readiness. Overall, the security maturity is moderate to good but could benefit from implementing additional best practices.

Recommendations

  1. Enable DNSSEC to enhance DNS security and prevent spoofing
  2. Implement a Content-Security-Policy header to mitigate cross-site scripting risks
  3. Publish a dedicated security policy or vulnerability disclosure page to improve transparency
  4. Add missing security headers such as X-Content-Type-Options and Referrer-Policy
  5. Conduct regular security audits of WordPress plugins and update them promptly
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Primary Engineer
Description
Leaders Award competition 'If you were an engineer, what would you do?' creates future engineers with FREE STEM resources for teachers & parents
Key services
Annual STEM competition, Free curriculum-mapped teaching resources, Personalised graded certificates for competition entries, Engineer interviews and podcasts, Teacher nomination and school nomination programs
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
WordPress 6.8.3, PHP (implied by WordPress), jQuery 3.7.1, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics (gtag.js), Facebook Pixel, Cloudflare DNS, Alpine.js
Frameworks
WordPress, Visual Composer (WPBakery), Ultimate VC Addons
Platforms
WordPress CMS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
75/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • ClientTransferProhibited domain status
  • Cookie consent banner with granular controls
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of Google reCAPTCHA cookie (_GRECAPTCHA) for spam protection

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Facebook Pixel
Marketing tools
CookieYes cookie consent
Transparency
good

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a well-established UK STEM education resource and competition platform
  2. Uses modern web technologies and WordPress CMS with multiple plugins
  3. Has comprehensive cookie consent and privacy policy compliant with GDPR
  4. No visible security or privacy red flags
  5. Strong social media presence and external partnerships with Primary Engineer
  6. No adult or questionable content detected
  7. Domain registration and hosting are consistent and legitimate
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on WordPress CMS with a modern tech stack including jQuery, Alpine.js, and various plugins for enhanced functionality such as search filtering and responsive menus. It uses Google Tag Manager to manage analytics and marketing tags efficiently. Hosting and DNS are managed via NetEarth One Inc. and Cloudflare respectively, providing reliable infrastructure. Performance is moderate with good mobile optimization and SEO practices including structured data and meta tags. Accessibility is basic but could be improved. The site uses multiple external resources and fonts, which may impact load times but are standard for modern websites.
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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