Assess resolver, authoritative, and network safeguards with weighted scoring. Benchmark configurations before attackers exploit bottlenecks. See clear priorities, risk bands, and mitigation actions instantly.
| Scenario | Peak QPS | Capacity QPS | Open Resolver % | Providers | Anycast Nodes | Score | Risk Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small Public Zone | 60,000 | 180,000 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 18.93 | Low |
| Regional Enterprise DNS | 220,000 | 320,000 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 47.34 | Moderate |
| High-Risk Legacy Setup | 300,000 | 280,000 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 89.57 | Critical |
This calculator converts infrastructure and control settings into normalized risk subscores, then combines them with weighted scoring and a business criticality multiplier.
Base Score = (0.24×Traffic) + (0.16×Amplification) + (0.18×Resolver Exposure) + (0.18×Redundancy) + (0.16×Controls) + (0.08×Operations)
Exposure Score = clamp(Base Score × Criticality Multiplier, 0, 100)
The calculator converts DNS posture metrics into a weighted exposure score from zero to one hundred. Traffic, amplification, resolver exposure, redundancy, controls, and operational response are normalized first, then combined using fixed weights. A business criticality multiplier raises the final score for zones that support revenue, customer login, API routing, or internal production dependencies. This gives security teams a consistent, decision-ready measurement for reporting across technical and executive reviews.
Peak DNS queries per second should reflect burst traffic, campaign launches, and past incidents rather than daily averages. Protected capacity should include authoritative service limits, anycast throughput, and contracted filtering headroom. When utilization rises toward forty percent, risk increases because attack margin shrinks. Amplification factor estimates should use realistic packet behavior. Open resolver exposure is entered as a percentage, making recursive misconfiguration immediately visible in trend discussions and audits.
Control coverage blends response rate limiting, DNSSEC readiness, upstream scrubbing, query throttling, and monitoring maturity into one subscore. Redundancy risk blends authoritative server count, anycast nodes, provider diversity, and geographic distribution. This separation helps teams identify whether exposure is caused by architecture concentration or incomplete safeguards. In many environments, adding a second provider and broader anycast coverage reduces exposure faster than small configuration refinements during early remediation planning cycles.
Failover time and mitigation activation time are converted into an operations subscore, keeping response readiness visible beside technical controls. Use measured drill values whenever possible, because estimated timelines are often optimistic. For critical public zones, many teams target failover below ten minutes and mitigation below fifteen minutes. Monitoring maturity should reflect telemetry quality, alert tuning, escalation ownership, and automation coverage, then be reviewed after each exercise and incident review.
This calculator supports monthly cyber risk reviews, provider comparisons, and remediation tracking without replacing packet-level testing or attack simulation. Exported results can accompany audit evidence, change requests, and leadership dashboards. Because scoring is normalized, teams can compare multiple DNS zones on one scale while preserving subscore detail for engineering actions. Recalculate after traffic growth, topology changes, vendor migrations, or retrospectives to maintain a reliable exposure baseline over reporting periods.
It summarizes DNS DDoS exposure on a 0-100 scale using traffic pressure, amplification potential, resolver exposure, redundancy, controls, and response speed. Higher scores indicate greater operational and business risk during an attack.
Use the defended throughput your DNS providers and filtering services can sustain during hostile traffic, not marketing maximums. If uncertain, use conservative values and revise after load tests or provider validation.
Publicly exposed recursive DNS can increase reflection and abuse opportunities. Even a small exposed percentage can raise risk because attackers exploit misconfigurations quickly and repeatedly during volumetric campaigns.
DNSSEC mainly improves integrity and trust, but in this model it also signals mature DNS management. It helps overall control readiness scoring, especially when combined with rate limiting and scrubbing.
Adding upstream scrubbing, removing open resolvers, and introducing provider redundancy usually reduce exposure faster than minor tuning. Results vary, so test scenarios in the calculator before approving remediation budgets.
Recalculate after architecture changes, traffic growth, provider migrations, or incident exercises. Many teams also review monthly so leadership sees trend direction and engineers can track remediation impact over time.
Important Note: All the Calculators listed in this site are for educational purpose only and we do not guarentee the accuracy of results. Please do consult with other sources as well.