thedailystar.net

Readiness by lane

Green: thedailystar.net. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for thedailystar.net

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

1. Priority 1 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

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

   Why it matters: HSTS tells browsers to use HTTPS for your host on every later visit, which removes the window where a first HTTP request can be intercepted.

   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 Cloudflare: Enable HSTS under SSL/TLS > Edge Certificates > HTTP Strict Transport Security and raise max-age gradually.

   35% of News & Media peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · 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

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   Content Security Policy present

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Content-Security-Policy header.

   What to do: Start with Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only to see what would break, tighten the policy over a few weeks, then enforce it.

   On Drupal: The Security Kit module includes CSP settings.

   29% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Payment Security and PCI DSS: What Website Owners Need to Know

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   CAA records limit who can issue certificates

   Observed: No CAA record was found for thedailystar.net, so any public certificate authority may issue for it.

   What to do: Publish CAA records naming every CA you actually use, including the CAs your CDN uses for managed certificates. Add an iodef contact if you want reports.

   On Cloudflare: Cloudflare documents which CAs its managed certificates need; include them in your CAA records.

   13% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

What thedailystar.net already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• Referrer-Policy setReferrer-Policy present.22% of peers
• HTTP/3 advertisedHTTP/3 advertised.36% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=quarantine.37% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.thedailystar.net/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Google Trust Services, 90-day validity, expiring 2027-01-20

CDN or edge

Cloudflare

Platform or framework

Drupal

DNS operators

Cloudflare

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

274 KB, br

Images on homepage

81 (jpg 188, png 27, webp 3, svg 2, 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

• swp.de79
• tatler.com79
• terra.com.br79
• thelallantop.com79
• thesouthafrican.com79

News & Media readiness benchmark