Common Questions | DDoS Testing

Absolutely. Your protection solution is only as good as its last real-world validation — and testing is the only way to confirm your mitigation stack can actually detect and neutralize an attack, and that no exploitable gaps remain in your defense posture.

The data backs this up: across our simulation engagements, 68% of uncovered protection failures were rated severe (zero detection or mitigation) or critical (only partial detection/mitigation). In our experience, most organizations are significantly more exposed than their current solution leads them to believe.

Yes. Our simulations are designed with operational safety as a core requirement. Our engineers are present throughout the entire test window, monitoring activity, managing execution, and providing real-time support to your team. Attack intensity is escalated gradually, giving you full visibility into how your systems behave and respond under increasing load. And at any point, a single-click Emergency Stop lets you halt the test immediately.

Three things set us apart.

Specialist-led engagements. Every test is designed and executed by dedicated DDoS specialists — not generalist penetration testers. Our team brings deep expertise in modern attack techniques and defense mechanisms, ensuring your simulation reflects the current threat landscape.

Infrastructure-tailored attack scenarios. We don’t run generic tests. We build attack scenarios specific to your infrastructure, APIs, and traffic patterns — replicating how a real threat actor would target your environment.

Findings you can act on. You don’t just get raw data. Every engagement delivers a detailed report with identified gaps, attack vector and impact analysis, an objective DDoS Resilience Score (DRS), and prioritized remediation recommendations — so results translate directly into an improved security posture.

Yes. Before any testing begins, we conduct a kick-off session with your team to walk through our methodology, identify any third-party approvals required (such as from ISPs or cloud providers), and collaboratively develop the test plan. Nothing is scheduled until you have reviewed and signed off on it.

We deliver a detailed test report, which includes: identified gaps, attack vector and impact analysis, your DDoS Resilience Score (DRS), and clear remediation recommendations. You can see a sample report here.

Minimal. A standard engagement requires approximately five hours of your team’s time in total: one hour for a pre-test interview to align on and approve the test plan, three hours for the live test session, and one hour for results readout and remediation recommendations. Everything else is handled by us.

Yes. Beyond delivering findings, our team can work directly with you to implement the recommended fixes and mitigation improvements — so the engagement doesn’t end with a report, it ends with a stronger defense.

Our simulations are architected around a white-box methodology — we analyze your network topology and system architecture to identify the same weak links and attack vectors a threat actor would target. From there, we design a tailored attack simulation that mirrors real-world DDoS tradecraft as closely as possible, rather than running generic volumetric tests against your perimeter.

The bare minimum for an enterprise would be once a year. However, quarterly testing is recommended for high-risk sectors such as financial services, gaming, healthcare, government, and critical infrastructure.

Our test repository covers over 100 attack vectors across three categories:

Application-layer (L7) attacks. The hardest to detect and mitigate — these tests assess your resilience against sophisticated, low-and-slow and high-request-rate attacks targeting your applications and APIs.

Volumetric attacks. Designed to exhaust bandwidth and infrastructure capacity, these simulate extreme and sustained campaigns generating massive traffic loads.

Protocol and network-layer attacks. Including SYN floods, UDP floods, and related vectors that target weaknesses in network stack and connection-state handling.

Across all categories, we apply a range of advanced techniques — including Hit-and-Run, Amplification, and Reflection attacks — mapped to the specific vectors most relevant to your environment.

A standard Advanced simulation runs three hours — enough to cover a comprehensive set of attack vectors without excessive disruption to your team. For broader coverage requiring additional attack vectors, extended sessions run up to six hours.

No. Red Button is an authorized AWS test partner, which means we can conduct DDoS simulations on AWS infrastructure without requiring you to notify or coordinate with AWS directly. This removes a common procedural hurdle — particularly valuable when timelines are tight or testing needs arise at short notice.

AWS provides a baseline — but baseline protection isn’t the same as validated protection. DDoS protection without testing is like shipping software without QA: you don’t actually know what will hold until it’s under pressure.

There’s also a shared responsibility dimension worth understanding. AWS covers network and infrastructure-layer attacks, but application-layer defense is largely your responsibility. Rate limiting, scanner and probe protection, auto-scaling configuration — these are controls only you can implement, and controls that only testing can validate.

No. Red Button is an authorized Microsoft Azure test partner, which means we can conduct DDoS simulations on Azure infrastructure without requiring you to notify or coordinate with Microsoft directly. This removes a common procedural hurdle — particularly valuable when timelines are tight or testing needs arise at short notice.

Without regular testing, gaps in your defenses accumulate silently. Misconfigurations go unnoticed, protection rules become outdated as your infrastructure evolves, and your team loses familiarity with response procedures. The result is an organization that believes it’s protected – until a real attack proves otherwise. Testing is how you stay ahead of that gap.

Yes – and the pattern is consistent. Organizations that test regularly discover critical misconfigurations, unprotected endpoints, or threshold limits that would have been exploited in a real attack. Catching that in a simulation costs far less than discovering it under fire.

During the engagement, our expert team works with you in the planning phase to define precise traffic volumes, ramp-up rates, and abort conditions – so the test is controlled throughout. That said, if your infrastructure has a critical undetected weakness, the test may surface it. We consider that a success, not a risk: finding it in a controlled setting with our team present is the best possible outcome. If needed, the test can also be conducted against non-production environments.

We have a clear stop procedure in place before every test begins. If an unexpected condition is detected – by either your team or ours – traffic can be halted immediately. Our engineers remain on a live call throughout the engagement, so response time is near-instant. We also document the event as part of the final report, giving you a precise record of what triggered the issue and how to address it.

We tailor the attack plan to your environment and threat model rather than running a fixed playbook. Simulations can include volumetric floods (UDP, ICMP, etc…), protocol attacks, and application-layer vectors such as HTTP request floods and slow-rate attacks. Traffic volumes are agreed upon in the test plan and escalated gradually – we’re not trying to overwhelm you without warning, we’re trying to find the point at which your protections fail.

Yes. We often limit tests to a single service, API endpoint, geographic region, or network segment. This approach is typical when you want to check a specific part of your system without affecting production environments widely, or when rules or contracts restrict the impact. The scope is defined and agreed upon in the test plan before anything starts.

Absolutely. We can schedule tests to minimize operational disruption, and running during off-hours or a pre-agreed maintenance window is standard practice. We’ll work with your team to identify the right window and adjust our timeline accordingly. The test plan will reflect the scheduled timing before any work begins.

Typically, around two weeks from initial kickoff to test execution, depending on the complexity of your environment and the availability of your team. This covers scoping, architecture review, test plan drafting, and your approval of the plan. For larger or more complex environments, this phase may run slightly longer – but we move at the pace that lets us do it right.

At a minimum, someone from your infrastructure or network security team who can monitor systems in real time and authorize a stop if needed. Depending on your setup, it can also be valuable to have your on-call team, or SOC, ready to engage – the test is an opportunity to validate their detection and mitigation procedures alongside your technical protections. We’ll align on this during planning.

Yes, and we strongly recommend it. A finding is only fully resolved when it’s been validated under the same conditions that exposed it. We offer targeted retest engagements focused specifically on previously identified gaps, so you can close the loop with confidence rather than assumption.

The report is delivered as a detailed PDF document, structured for two audiences: an executive summary for leadership, and a technical findings section for your engineering and security teams. If your team needs the data in a specific format for integration into a ticketing system or security platform, we can accommodate that – just let us know during planning.