nbcnews.com

Readiness by lane

Green: nbcnews.com. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for nbcnews.com

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Harden

   TLS 1.3 negotiated

   Observed: The TLS connection negotiated TLSv1.2.

   Why it matters: TLS 1.3 removes legacy cipher suites and completes the handshake in fewer round trips, so it is both safer and faster for new connections.

   What to do: Enable TLS 1.3 on your CDN or server. Keep TLS 1.2 available for older clients unless you have checked your audience.

   93% of News & Media peers do this. Limit: Certificate and protocol were observed from one vantage point; CDNs can present different certificates by region.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 1 days, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   60% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: Strict-Transport-Security was sent with a max-age of 30 days, below the one-year benchmark.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   On Next.js: Add the header in the headers() option of next.config.js for all routes.

   35% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject

   Observed: The DMARC policy for nbcnews.com was p=none, which asks receivers to take no action on failing mail.

   What to do: Publish DMARC with p=none and a reporting address first, fix any legitimate senders that fail SPF or DKIM alignment, then move to quarantine and finally reject.

   37% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

What nbcnews.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers
• Framing restrictedFraming controls present.42% of peers
• No render-blocking scripts in <head>Head scripts load without blocking.42% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.nbcnews.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.2, HTTP/2

Certificate

DigiCert, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-04-28

CDN or edge

Akamai

Platform or framework

Next.js

DNS operators

1 self-run or other nameserver domain

HSTS

max-age 30 days, preload

DMARC policy

p=none

Homepage HTML

1,412 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

113 (jpg 190, svg 30, png 13, gif 2)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other News & Media sites

• motorsport-magazin.com66
• nachrichten.at66
• nacion.com66
• nefes.com.tr66
• newrepublic.com66

News & Media readiness benchmark