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Security report for st-albans.herts.sch.uk

St Albans School · Education · United Kingdom

Low risk. 3 critical or high findings in SSL/TLS, Security headers and 1 other check.

Security score

78/100

Risk levelLow

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

St Albans School is a prestigious independent boys school located in Hertfordshire, UK, offering outstanding education including a private sixth form. The website presents a professional and well-structured digital presence targeting prospective students and parents. The technical infrastructure includes modern web technologies such as Google Tag Manager and FontAwesome, with good mobile optimization and SEO practices. Security posture is adequate with HTTPS and CSP nonce usage, but lacks explicit security headers and visible privacy or cookie policies. WHOIS data is unavailable from the provided raw output, limiting domain trust verification. Overall, the website is credible and well-maintained but would benefit from enhanced privacy compliance and security transparency.

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

3 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. 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 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';…

  3. 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

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

Keep watching st-albans.herts.sch.uk

This scan found 17 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
62
Security headers
65
Email security
95
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
73
Average
78

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 school operates in the education sector, focusing on independent boys education and sixth form studies. It holds a strong market position as one of the oldest and leading private schools in the region. The business model is based on tuition and educational services. The website content and metadata emphasize academic excellence and pastoral care, appealing to families seeking quality education. The absence of detailed WHOIS data and contact emails suggests a cautious approach to public data exposure. The use of Google Tag Manager indicates engagement in analytics and marketing efforts. No partnerships or subsidiaries are evident from the data.

Security posture

The website enforces HTTPS and includes a Content Security Policy nonce, which are positive security measures. However, it lacks common security headers such as HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options, which could improve protection against common web attacks. No forms or input fields were detected in the provided HTML, reducing attack surface. No vulnerability disclosure or incident response information is available, which could be a gap in security transparency. The WHOIS data absence limits domain legitimacy verification. Overall, the security posture is moderate but could be strengthened with additional headers and policies.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publicly link a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie consent mechanism to improve GDPR compliance.
  2. Add standard security headers including HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options to enhance security posture.
  3. Publish a security.txt file or vulnerability disclosure policy to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.
  4. Provide clear contact information including company emails and phone numbers for transparency and trust.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and tracking tools to minimize privacy risks and improve user trust.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
St Albans School
Description
One of the oldest private schools in the world, St Albans School is an outstanding & leading independent boys school & private sixth form in Herts, UK.
Key services
Boys school education, Private sixth form education
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Google Tag Manager, FontAwesome, Swiper.js, Bootstrap CSS classes, Custom CSS and JS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Content Security Policy nonce present

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager)
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is professionally designed with rich content about St Albans School.
  2. No privacy or cookie policies explicitly found in the HTML content provided.
  3. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly found in the HTML snippet; only physical address in meta description.
  4. No forms detected in the provided HTML snippet.
  5. Use of Google Tag Manager indicates some level of analytics and tracking.
  6. No visible security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information.
  7. No explicit security headers detected in the HTML content.
  8. WHOIS data unavailable from Nominet, possibly due to domain type or proxy registration.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern front-end stack with asynchronous loading of CSS and JavaScript, including Google Tag Manager for analytics and FontAwesome for icons. The site is responsive and optimized for mobile devices. Performance appears moderate based on resource loading patterns. No CMS or hosting provider information was detected. The site uses custom CSS and third-party CDN resources. Accessibility features appear adequate with semantic HTML and ARIA roles implied by structure. SEO is supported by canonical links, meta descriptions, and Open Graph tags. Technical debt is minimal but could be improved by consolidating external resources and enhancing security headers.
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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