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Security report for sportengland.org

Sport England · Government · United Kingdom

High risk. 8 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, SSL/TLS and 1 other check.

Security score

46/100

Risk levelHigh

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

Sport England is a UK government-related non-profit organization dedicated to promoting sport and physical activity across England. The website serves as a comprehensive resource hub offering funding opportunities, research data, guidance, and campaigns to support various stakeholders including volunteers, grassroots organizers, schools, and national governing bodies. The organization is primarily funded by the National Lottery, which is prominently acknowledged on the site. The website is professionally designed with clear navigation and strong branding consistency, targeting a broad audience involved in sport and physical activity.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
0/ 100 · Critical
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

8 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.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS encryption

      GDPR requires appropriate security measures for personal data

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate for HTTPS

    • 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

  2. 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.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS Encryption

      Website does not use HTTPS encryption, making all data transmission vulnerable to interception

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS

  3. 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';…

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Keep watching sportengland.org

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  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
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  • 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
0
Security headers
40
Email security
50
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
0
Average
46

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

Sport England holds a strong market position as a government-backed entity with a large operational scale. Its business model revolves around funding and supporting sport initiatives, providing data insights, and running national campaigns. The website reflects a mature digital presence with integration of modern marketing and tracking tools such as Google Tag Manager. The organization maintains active social media channels to engage its audience. The absence of direct contact emails or phone numbers suggests a controlled communication approach via web forms. The partnership ecosystem includes related platforms like Buddle and OpenActive, enhancing its service offerings.

Security posture

The website's security posture is weak due to the absence of a valid SSL certificate and lack of HTTPS support, which is a critical issue for any modern website. While some security headers like X-Content-Type-Options and X-Frame-Options are present, the lack of TLS protocols, HSTS, OCSP stapling, and session resumption significantly lowers the security score. No explicit security policies or incident response contacts are published, indicating potential gaps in security governance and transparency. These vulnerabilities expose the site and its users to risks such as data interception and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Recommendations

  1. Urgently install and maintain a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS across the entire site.
  2. Enable and configure modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) to secure data in transit.
  3. Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to enforce secure connections.
  4. Enable OCSP stapling to improve certificate revocation checking and performance.
  5. Publish clear security policies and incident response contact information to enhance transparency and trust.
  6. Regularly audit and update security headers and configurations to align with best practices.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on Drupal 10 CMS with extensive use of jQuery and jQuery UI libraries. It is hosted behind Cloudflare CDN, which provides performance and security benefits, although the SSL configuration is currently invalid or missing. The site uses Google Tag Manager for analytics and marketing tracking, and CookieLaw.org scripts for cookie consent management. The site is mobile optimized and accessible with good SEO practices including meta tags and Open Graph data. Performance metrics were not available, but the site structure and resource usage suggest a moderate performance profile. Technical debt is indicated by the lack of proper SSL and outdated security configurations, which should be prioritized for remediation.
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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