Header Security Analyzer

The headers that matter, in order

Content-Security-Policy is the most powerful and the hardest to deploy: it controls which sources may load scripts, styles, frames and other resources, and it is the primary defence against cross-site scripting. Strict-Transport-Security forces HTTPS for a stated period, closing the window where a first plain-HTTP request can be intercepted. X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff stops browsers second-guessing a declared content type, which prevents a text file being executed as script. Referrer-Policy limits what URL information leaks to third parties. X-Frame-Options, or better the frame-ancestors directive in CSP, blocks clickjacking.

CSP is worth doing properly or not at all

A policy containing unsafe-inline for scripts provides almost no XSS protection, because inline injection is the main attack. The meaningful path is nonces or hashes on legitimate inline scripts and strict-dynamic for loaders. Deploy in report-only mode first and collect violations for a couple of weeks — every non-trivial site discovers dependencies its authors had forgotten. Enforcing an untested policy breaks analytics, embedded video and payment widgets simultaneously.

HSTS has a commitment you cannot undo quickly

The max-age directive tells browsers to refuse plain HTTP for that duration, and they honour it even if your certificate later expires or you need to serve HTTP. Start with a short max-age, confirm nothing breaks, then raise it. The preload list is stronger still — it ships in browsers, applies before any first visit, and removal takes months. Do not add includeSubDomains until every subdomain genuinely serves HTTPS, including ones you forgot about.

Headers that are now noise

X-XSS-Protection controlled a browser auditor that every major browser has removed; it did nothing useful and in some configurations introduced vulnerabilities, so the current advice is to omit it or set it to 0. Public-Key-Pins was deprecated and removed after it caused sites to lock themselves out permanently. Expect-CT is obsolete now that Certificate Transparency is enforced by default. Scanners still flag some of these, and following that advice is a step backwards.

Permissions-Policy limits browser features

Formerly Feature-Policy, it disables APIs the site does not use — camera, microphone, geolocation, payment. Its value is containment: if a third-party script is compromised, it cannot reach a capability the page already surrendered.

Headers do not fix the underlying flaw

They are defence in depth. A strong CSP reduces the impact of an XSS vulnerability; it does not remove it. Input validation, output encoding and current dependencies remain the primary work, and a perfect header score on a scanner says nothing about the application behind it.

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