Skip to main content

Security report for rcgp.org.uk

Royal College of General Practitioners · Healthcare · United Kingdom

Low risk. 2 critical or high findings in SSL/TLS and DNS health.

Security score

76/100

Risk levelLow

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

The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) is a professional membership organization serving over 53,000 general practitioners (GPs) in the United Kingdom. It acts as the guardian of standards for GPs, providing education, certification, career support, and advocacy services. The website reflects a mature and well-established institution with a clear focus on healthcare professionals, particularly GPs. The organization holds a leading market position within the UK healthcare sector, offering a broad range of services including MRCGP exams, learning resources, and membership benefits. Technically, the website is built on the Kentico CMS platform and utilizes modern frameworks such as Bootstrap. It integrates multiple analytics and marketing tools including Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, and Plausible Analytics, all managed with appropriate cookie consent mechanisms. The site demonstrates good mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO practices, contributing to a positive user experience. From a security perspective, the website enforces HTTPS and employs standard security headers, indicating a strong security posture. However, explicit security policies, incident response contacts, and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms are not publicly documented, representing areas for improvement. No critical vulnerabilities or suspicious external domains were detected. Overall, the website is professional, trustworthy, and compliant with privacy regulations such as GDPR. The WHOIS lookup failed due to querying the 'www' subdomain instead of the base domain, but the domain is known and legitimate. Strategic recommendations include publishing detailed security and incident response policies and establishing a vulnerability disclosure program to enhance transparency and trust.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
83/ 100 · Low
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. 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

  2. DNS health

    DNS sends visitors and email to the right servers. Misconfigured records can cause outages or let someone redirect your traffic.

    • High

      Domain Expires Soon

      Domain expires in 18 days

      What to do: Renew domain registration before expiration

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

Keep watching rcgp.org.uk

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.

Daily monitoring

Recommended

€25per month

  • 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.

Billed monthly to your card. Cancel anytime. See sample alerts.

Full report

€39.90one-time

  • The complete analysis as a PDF you can cite
  • Email delivery with an unlock code
  • Lifetime access to this report

Prices incl. 21% VAT. Secure checkout by Mollie; sold by SEQ SIA, Latvia.

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
80
Email security
70
DNS health
50
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
83
Average
76

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

RCGP operates as an essential entity within the UK healthcare sector, focusing on professional development and standards for general practitioners. Its business model centers on membership fees, educational services, and advocacy. The organization targets healthcare professionals, primarily GPs, offering certification exams, learning resources, and career support. The website content and structure indicate a large, established organization with a strong brand presence. Partnerships with recognized analytics and marketing platforms support its digital engagement strategy. Growth indicators include a large membership base and active provision of educational content and events. The organization maintains a professional online presence with consistent branding and comprehensive content.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a good security maturity level with enforced HTTPS, use of security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were identified in the HTML content. Cookie consent mechanisms are implemented to comply with privacy regulations. However, the absence of a publicly available security policy, incident response contact details, and vulnerability disclosure program suggests gaps in transparency and incident readiness. The organization should consider publishing these documents and contacts to improve security culture and stakeholder trust. Overall, the security posture is strong but can be enhanced by formalizing and communicating security governance.

Recommendations

  1. Publish a dedicated security policy page outlining security practices and commitments.
  2. Provide clear incident response contact information, including security or abuse email addresses.
  3. Implement and publicize a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting.
  4. Enhance transparency by listing the Data Protection Officer contact details as per GDPR requirements.
  5. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and analytics tools to mitigate potential vulnerabilities.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Royal College of General Practitioners
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Royal College of General Practitioners
Description
We are the professional membership body and guardian of standards for over 53,000 GPs in the UK.
Key services
MRCGP exams, Learning resources and courses, Career support, Membership services, Advocacy and representation
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, Plausible Analytics, Bootstrap, Kentico CMS
Frameworks
Bootstrap
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Use of security headers
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Secure cookie consent mechanisms

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, Plausible Analytics
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Ad networks
Bing Ads
Tracking pixels
Facebook Pixel, Microsoft Clarity, Plausible Analytics
Marketing tools
Plausible Analytics, Microsoft Clarity
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. No WAF or blocking mechanisms detected.
  3. WHOIS data extraction failed due to querying 'www.rcgp.org.uk' instead of 'rcgp.org.uk'.
  4. Strong presence of privacy and cookie policies with consent mechanisms.
  5. Use of multiple analytics and marketing tools with cookie consent compliance.
  6. No security policy or incident response contact page explicitly found.
  7. No vulnerability disclosure or security.txt file detected.
  8. Professional healthcare organization with large membership base.
  9. Website uses Kentico CMS and Bootstrap framework.
  10. Good SEO, accessibility, and mobile optimization observed.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on a modern technology stack featuring Kentico CMS and Bootstrap framework, ensuring responsive design and accessibility. Integration of multiple analytics platforms (Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, Plausible) and marketing tools (Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, Bing Ads) indicates a mature digital marketing strategy. Performance is moderate with good mobile optimization and SEO practices. The site uses standard security headers and enforces HTTPS, contributing to a secure browsing experience. Technical risks are minimal but include reliance on multiple third-party scripts which require ongoing monitoring. Opportunities exist to improve technical documentation and security transparency.
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

Reviews of this site

Share your experience with rcgp.org.uk. Every review is verified by email and published after moderation.

Overall rating
Select a rating
4000 characters remaining

We’ll email you to confirm your review and keep your details private.

Community rating

No published reviews yet. Be the first to review rcgp.org.uk.

Feedback on this report

Rate this report, add an optional comment, and tell us if you want a security specialist to follow up.

Overall report quality
Select a rating
2000 characters remaining

We only use your feedback to improve Guard reports. Contact details are never shared.