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Security report for nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk

National Crime Agency · Government · United Kingdom

Medium risk. 6 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 2 other checks.

Security score

67/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The National Crime Agency website serves as the official digital presence of the UK's primary law enforcement agency focused on combating serious and organised crime. The site provides authoritative information on the agency's mission, operations, and public safety initiatives, targeting the UK public, law enforcement partners, and victims. It maintains a strong market position as a government entity with comprehensive services including intelligence gathering, investigations, and specialist law enforcement capabilities. The website content is professionally curated, with clear navigation and consistent branding that reinforces trust and credibility. Technically, the site is built on Joomla CMS with modern front-end frameworks such as Bootstrap and jQuery, ensuring a responsive and accessible user experience. The use of Google Tag Manager indicates a mature approach to analytics and marketing. Performance is moderate with good mobile optimization and SEO practices. Security-wise, the site enforces HTTPS, uses CSRF tokens in forms, and avoids exposing sensitive data. However, it lacks explicit security policies, vulnerability disclosure mechanisms, and some recommended security headers, which could be improved to enhance its security posture. Overall, the website demonstrates a high level of professionalism, trustworthiness, and compliance with privacy regulations including GDPR. The domain's WHOIS data confirms its legitimacy as a long-standing UK government domain. There are no indications of adult or unsafe content, making it suitable for a general audience. Strategic recommendations include publishing a dedicated security policy, implementing vulnerability disclosure, and enhancing security headers to further strengthen the site's security and compliance. This assessment concludes that the National Crime Agency website is a reliable, secure, and authoritative source of information for its stakeholders, with minor areas for technical and security improvements to maintain its high standards.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
73/ 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

6 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 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

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Keep watching nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk

This scan found 24 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
72
Security headers
15
Email security
85
DNS health
55
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
73
Average
67

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 National Crime Agency operates as a key government agency in the UK, specializing in tackling serious and organised crime. Its business model is centered on law enforcement, intelligence, and public safety services. The agency benefits from a strong market position due to its official status and comprehensive mandate. Revenue streams are government-funded, with no commercial activities evident. Target customers include UK citizens, law enforcement partners, and victims of crime. Growth indicators include ongoing public communications and digital engagement. The partnership ecosystem includes related government bodies such as CEOP. Strategic observations highlight a focus on transparency, public trust, and operational effectiveness through digital channels.

Security posture

The website exhibits a mature security posture with HTTPS enforced and CSRF protections in place. The absence of exposed sensitive data and use of asynchronous loading for analytics scripts are positive indicators. However, the lack of explicit security policies, incident response contacts, and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms represent gaps in transparency and readiness. Security headers beyond HTTPS are not evident, which could expose the site to certain web-based attacks. Overall, the security maturity is good but could be enhanced by adopting best practices such as publishing a security.txt file, adding comprehensive security headers, and providing clear incident response information to stakeholders.

Recommendations

  1. Publish a dedicated security policy page outlining security practices and commitments.
  2. Implement and publicly expose a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file.
  3. Add security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options.
  4. Provide clear incident response contact channels for security issues.
  5. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and dependencies to mitigate vulnerabilities.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
National Crime Agency
Description
The National Crime Agency leads the UK's fight to cut serious and organised crime.
Key services
Investigating serious and organised crime, Providing specialist law enforcement capabilities, Supporting victims and survivors, Intelligence gathering and analysis
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Joomla CMS, jQuery, Bootstrap 5.3.3, Google Tag Manager, Fancybox
Frameworks
Bootstrap
Platforms
Web
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • CSRF token present in forms
  • Use of Google Tag Manager asynchronously
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Quick exit button for user safety

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website uses a well-known CMS (Joomla) with modern front-end frameworks (Bootstrap 5).
  2. Content is rich, relevant, and professionally presented with clear navigation.
  3. Strong focus on public safety, crime prevention, and law enforcement.
  4. Includes social media integration with official channels.
  5. No signs of suspicious or malicious content.
  6. Good privacy and cookie policy presence with consent mechanism.
  7. No explicit security policy or incident response contact publicly visible.
  8. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure found.
  9. Domain WHOIS data consistent with official UK government domain.
Technical notes

Notes

The website leverages Joomla CMS combined with Bootstrap 5 and jQuery, providing a modern and responsive front-end experience. Google Tag Manager is used for analytics and marketing, indicating a mature digital strategy. The site is mobile-optimized and accessible, with good SEO metadata and structured data using JSON-LD. Performance is moderate, with room for optimization in loading times and script management. The technical infrastructure is stable and well-maintained, but could benefit from enhanced security headers and more explicit hosting details. Overall, the technical implementation supports the agency's mission effectively with opportunities for 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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