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Security report for uclacademy.co.uk

The UCL Academy · Education · United Kingdom

High risk. 5 critical or high findings in DNS health, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

49/100

Risk levelHigh

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

The UCL Academy website represents a well-established educational institution in inner London, providing secondary and sixth form education with a focus on STEAM and strong university sponsorship by UCL. The site offers comprehensive information for students, parents, and staff, including curriculum details, admissions, wellbeing, and online learning resources. Technically, the site is built on WordPress with modern libraries and frameworks, delivering a good user experience with mobile optimization and clear navigation. Security posture is adequate with HTTPS and cookie consent implemented, but the expired domain status and lack of explicit security policies present risks. Privacy compliance is addressed with a GDPR-compliant privacy policy and cookie banner, though Google Analytics is not fully configured. Overall, the site is professional and trustworthy but requires urgent domain renewal and enhanced security transparency.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
65/ 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

5 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. DNS health

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

    • Critical

      Domain Expired

      Domain expired 27 days ago

      What to do: Renew domain registration immediately

  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • 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

    • High

      Third-party services without privacy policy

      Detected services: Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Cloudflare, Google APIs

      What to do: Document all third-party data sharing in your privacy policy

  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
    • High

      Weak SSL Key Length

      SSL certificate uses 256-bit key, which is considered weak

      What to do: Use at least 2048-bit RSA or 256-bit ECC key

      • CWE-326
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • Mozilla TLS: Mozilla Server Side TLS 6.0 intermediate: rsa_key_size 2048

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

Keep watching uclacademy.co.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

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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
47
Security headers
80
Email security
85
DNS health
10
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
65
Average
65
After the cap
49

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 · found on this site
  • 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 UCL Academy operates as a medium-sized educational institution targeting students aged 11-18 in London, leveraging its affiliation with University College London to enhance its market position. Its business model focuses on delivering quality education with a STEAM specialism and extensive support services. The website reflects a mature digital presence with active social media engagement and detailed content supporting admissions and community involvement. The lack of direct registrant information in WHOIS is typical for hosted domains but the expired domain status is a notable risk. The academy's partnerships and initiatives with UCL and other educational programs position it well within the education sector.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security maturity level with HTTPS enforced and cookie consent mechanisms in place. However, the expired domain registration poses a significant risk of domain hijacking or service disruption. The absence of published security policies, incident response contacts, and vulnerability disclosure reduces transparency and preparedness. Security headers beyond HTTPS are not explicitly detected, and no security.txt file is present. The site uses reputable plugins and libraries but should regularly audit for vulnerabilities. Overall, the security posture is functional but requires improvements in domain management and policy publication to enhance trust and compliance.

Recommendations

  1. Renew the domain registration immediately to prevent potential hijacking or downtime.
  2. Publish a clear security policy and incident response contact information on the website.
  3. Implement additional security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  4. Regularly audit and update all plugins and third-party libraries to mitigate vulnerabilities.
  5. Configure Google Analytics properly or remove it if not in use to avoid unnecessary tracking.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
The UCL Academy
Description
The UCL Academy is a diverse school in inner London for girls and boys aged 11-18, supported by University College London, aiming to inspire students to fulfil their potential and achieve success regardless of background.
Key services
Secondary education (Years 7-11), Sixth Form education (Level 3), Online learning tools, Admissions and open events, Student wellbeing and safeguarding, House system and extracurricular activities
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
WordPress, jQuery, Bootstrap, FontAwesome, Google Fonts, Animate.css, Slick Carousel, SmartAsses plugin, SmartHouses plugin, Contact Form 7
Frameworks
Bootstrap
Platforms
WordPress
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
70/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Cookie consent banner implemented
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of reputable plugins and libraries

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Google Analytics (not configured)
Marketing tools
MonsterInsights (Google Analytics plugin)
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is a WordPress-based educational site for UCL Academy
  2. Content is rich and well-structured with clear navigation
  3. Social media presence is active and linked
  4. Domain expiry is a critical issue that needs immediate attention
  5. No explicit security or incident response policies published
  6. Cookie consent is implemented with opt-out mechanism
  7. Google Analytics is included but not fully configured
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on a WordPress CMS platform using Bootstrap for responsive design, jQuery for scripting, and several plugins including Contact Form 7 and custom SmartAsses and SmartHouses plugins. It uses Google Fonts and FontAwesome for styling and icons. The site loads multiple CSS and JS assets from both internal and external CDNs, including cdnjs and Google APIs. Performance is moderate with good mobile optimization and basic accessibility features. SEO is supported by meta tags and Open Graph data. Hosting is provided by Flywheel Tech Limited, a known hosting provider. The site lacks advanced security headers and some analytics configuration is incomplete, indicating room for technical improvements.
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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