nine.com.au

Readiness by lane

Green: nine.com.au. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for nine.com.au

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 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Strict-Transport-Security header.

   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 Fastly: Add the header in VCL or a header rule as described in Fastly's HSTS guide.

   35% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 1 external script without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   Framing restricted

   Observed: The homepage did not send frame-ancestors or X-Frame-Options, so other sites may frame it.

   What to do: Send Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' (or a list of trusted origins). X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN covers older browsers.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

What nine.com.au already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• security.txt publishedsecurity.txt with a contact found.6.2% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=reject.37% of peers
• Modern image formats in useWebP or AVIF images detected.44% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.nine.com.au/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.2, HTTP/2

Certificate

Sectigo, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-04-08

CDN or edge

Fastly

DNS operators

Amazon Route 53

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

1,363 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

62 (jpg 150, svg 7)

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

• news.jp68
• newsnationnow.com68
• ngnovoros.ru68
• nme.com68
• noob-club.ru68

News & Media readiness benchmark