QUESTION: How should security teams ensure they are effectively testing their DDoS defenses against their environment?
Matthew Andriani, co-founder and CEO MazeBolt: Millions of people wait until the final days, if not the last day, before the tax filing deadline. Any platform handling tax filings, refund processing, or document uploads should recognize that the filing rush creates a perfect storm in which attacks can have a greater operational impact, as cyberattackers often carry out their activities during these peak-demand periods. During these peak loads, availability risk increases, and Layer 7 endpoints like login, account creation, and submission APIs can become harder to protect without blocking legitimate users. Filers are already worried about the deadline, so repeated login failures, stalling, or unexplained timeouts quickly erode trust.
This is not theoretical; there have been instances where government systems experienced cyberattacks during peak filing periods. In 2025, users in the Netherlands were unable to log in to DigiD for hours following a DDoS attack shortly after tax filing opened, disrupting access during a high-demand period. Similarly, Poland’s national registry system experienced a cyber incident coinciding with its tax deadline, affecting access to critical government services. These incidents underscore how predictable traffic surges can amplify the operational impact of disruption.
To identify and fix DDoS vulnerabilities, organizations typically rely on periodic DDoS testing conducted during maintenance windows. However, the environment you tested in January isn’t the one you’re running in April. Application releases, infrastructure modifications, CDN routing changes, and bot mitigation updates can all alter how defenses behave under peak demand. Rather than relying on point-in-time assessments or even just guessing, a strategy of continuously identifying vulnerabilities allows security teams to proactively remediate critical vulnerabilities in their DDoS defenses and configurations.
Security teams need to confirm that attack traffic will be stopped and legitimate filers won’t get caught in the crossfire. Outages rarely come from “unknown unknowns”; they come from assumptions that were never tested. Continuous, nondisruptive testing alongside live traffic makes it possible to confirm both. Here are some questions security leaders should be asking:
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Have we tested authentication and API endpoints so that we can identify and remediate DDoS vulnerabilities and misconfigurations?
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Have we validated rate-limiting and bot controls against Layer 7 abuse?
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Have recent application, infrastructure or policy changes introduced new exposure?
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Do we have evidence that defenses perform as expected today?
Tax season will always bring heightened demand for a short period. What organizations can control is not just assuming they are ready, but employing strategies to keep their defenses working consistently so they will hold.
