R05 — DDoS

Q: How do security teams mitigate DDoS?

In CISO Game, DDoS is reduced by Prevention (70%), Response (30%) subscores. Real-world programs use the same control families, with category investments such as Next-Gen Firewall (NGFW), WAF + DDoS Protection, Hire Network Engineer.

Q: Why does DDoS matter to a CISO?

Severity 5 (Moderate). Volumetric DDoS isn't typically a strategic risk for SaaS — cloud DDoS protection has commoditized — but Layer-7 application DDoS and DDoS-extortion campaigns remain alive and well. The strategic question is whether the program has measured its critical-path dependencies (DNS, identity provider, edge, payment processor) and whether a 4-hour outage of any one of them is recoverable.

Stress-test DDoS in the Standard run scenario Mid-size SaaS company. Balanced challenge.

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R05 External Severity 5 · Moderate

Volumetric and protocol-layer floods that exhaust bandwidth or connection-state and take services offline. WAF/DDoS scrubbing providers are the dominant prevention; response capability minimizes mean-time-to-mitigate when novel attack patterns slip through. Residual is small for cloud-fronted apps; higher for on-prem origins.

What is DDoS?

How does CISO Game model DDoS?

Exposure for R05 runs from 0 to 100, recomputed live as you buy, cancel, or reassign products. How the exposure model works →

Real-world parallel

Volumetric DDoS isn't typically a strategic risk for SaaS — cloud DDoS protection has commoditized — but Layer-7 application DDoS and DDoS-extortion campaigns remain alive and well. The strategic question is whether the program has measured its critical-path dependencies (DNS, identity provider, edge, payment processor) and whether a 4-hour outage of any one of them is recoverable.

How do security teams mitigate DDoS?

The dominant subscore levers for this risk are:

Prevention subscore — weight 70%
Response subscore — weight 30%

Which investments mitigate DDoS?

Products in CISO Game that reduce exposure to R05:

Which related risks should you also watch?

Risks with similar dominant subscores or shared category — addressing one often helps the others:

Why does DDoS matter to a CISO?

External adversarial risks like ddos are the risks boards expect their CISO to talk about. They drive the strongest demand for detection + response capability and the strongest emotional response in the boardroom.

How can you test your mitigation strategy?

Click Play CISO Game free to see R05 appear live in your risk register and watch each purchase move the exposure number in real time. No signup required.

Stress-test DDoS in the Standard run scenario →