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Security report for nih.gov

National Institutes of Health · Government · United States

Low risk. 2 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view.

Security score

82/100

Risk levelLow

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

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a premier U.S. government medical research agency under the Department of Health and Human Services. It provides extensive health information, research funding, clinical trials, and training resources targeting a broad audience including the public, researchers, and medical professionals. The website reflects a strong market position as a federal health research leader with a comprehensive service portfolio. Technically, the NIH website is built on Drupal 10, leveraging modern analytics and tracking tools such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Crazy Egg. The site demonstrates excellent performance, mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO practices, ensuring a high-quality user experience. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS, uses external link security attributes, and maintains a vulnerability disclosure policy. However, it lacks explicit security headers and a cookie consent mechanism, which are recommended for enhanced security and privacy compliance. The WHOIS data is incomplete but the .gov domain and official content strongly support legitimacy. Overall, NIH's website is professional, trustworthy, and well-maintained, with minor areas for improvement in security headers and privacy consent mechanisms to further strengthen its security posture and compliance.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of nih.gov. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 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

2 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. 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

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Keep watching nih.gov

This scan found 15 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
85
Email security
85
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
82

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

NIH operates as a government entity focused on biomedical research and public health information dissemination. Its business model centers on funding research, providing educational resources, and supporting clinical trials. The agency's target customers include scientists, healthcare providers, patients, educators, and the general public. NIH benefits from strong government backing, extensive partnerships, and a well-established reputation. The website's content and structure support NIH's mission to advance health research and public trust. The organization leverages digital tools to enhance outreach and engagement, with a clear emphasis on transparency and accessibility. Growth indicators include ongoing research initiatives and funding programs. Strategic observations highlight NIH's role as a critical government health research institution with a broad ecosystem of related domains and services.

Security posture

NIH's website demonstrates a mature security posture with mandatory HTTPS, secure external linking practices, and a publicly available vulnerability disclosure policy. The absence of explicit security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options is a minor gap. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the HTML content. The site does not display incident response contact emails or a security.txt file, which could improve incident handling transparency. Overall, NIH maintains a strong security culture consistent with government standards but could enhance defenses with additional headers and privacy consent mechanisms.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and enforce security headers like Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security.
  2. Add a cookie consent banner to comply fully with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
  3. Publish clear incident response contact information and consider adding a security.txt file.
  4. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools for vulnerabilities and privacy compliance.
  5. Enhance WHOIS transparency if possible to improve domain trust signals.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
National Institutes of Health
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
National Institutes of Health
Description
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.
Key services
Medical research, Health information dissemination, Grants and funding, Training and education, Clinical trials
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal 10, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Pinterest JS, Verint Unified WebSDK
Frameworks
Drupal CMS
Performance
fast
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
excellent
SEO
excellent

Security

Observed score
90/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • External links use noreferrer and nofollow
  • Security and vulnerability disclosure policy linked
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Crazy Egg, DigitalGov Web Vitals
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Crazy Egg, Pinterest
Marketing tools
Crazy Egg
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Official U.S. government website with .gov domain
  2. Comprehensive health and research information
  3. No signs of malicious or suspicious content
  4. Strong branding and consistent design
  5. Use of modern web technologies and analytics
  6. No visible contact emails or phone numbers, only physical address
  7. Privacy and vulnerability disclosure policies present
  8. No cookie consent mechanism detected
Technical notes

Notes

The NIH website uses Drupal 10 CMS, a robust and widely supported platform for government websites. It integrates multiple analytics and tracking services including Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Crazy Egg, and DigitalGov Web Vitals for performance monitoring. The site is mobile-optimized, accessible, and SEO-friendly with proper meta tags and Open Graph data. The hosting provider is not explicitly identified but the use of cloud.acquia.com suggests Acquia hosting or CDN services. Performance is fast with asynchronous loading of scripts and optimized images. Technical risks are minimal, with opportunities to improve security headers and privacy consent mechanisms.
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. 49/100 −32High38 findingsView report
  2. 81/100Low21 findingsView report
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