Akamai API Security – The API Security Life Cycle
In this blog, we are going to learn about the life cycle of API Security.
APIs are at the heart of digital transformation, powering everything from applications to complex enterprise systems. As the reliance on APIs grows, ensuring robust security measures is crucial. This blog explores the fundamental aspects of API security, outlining the core pillars that help organizations mitigate risks, ensure compliance, and maintain secure API operations.
Essential Components of API Security
An effective API security framework is built on five key pillars. Each pillar plays a vital role in securing your APIs, enabling visibility, and preventing potential security breaches.
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API Discovery: The First Step in Securing Your Ecosystem
API discovery is the critical process of identifying and cataloging every API within your environment. This visibility is essential because, while API gateways and WAFs can monitor traffic that passes through them, many APIs may still remain undetected.
These unnoticed APIs, often called shadow or zombie APIs, can present a significant security risk. Shadow APIs are those that are no longer in active use, while zombie APIs remain operational despite being neglected. With API sprawl across various teams and departments, a unified approach to API discovery is necessary for complete visibility. By uncovering these hidden endpoints, organizations can reduce security vulnerabilities and optimize resource management.
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Posture Management: Safeguarding APIs from Misconfigurations
Posture management focuses on identifying and resolving configuration weaknesses that could lead to data breaches or regulatory non-compliance. For instance, misconfigurations might involve improper authentication methods, unnecessary exposure to the internet, or the lack of rate-limiting and encryption.
Moreover, posture management evaluates the contextual data APIs handle, such as sensitive information (PII, credit card data, etc.), to spot potential compliance risks. API gateways and WAFs alone cannot provide this in-depth analysis, making posture management an essential tool for comprehensive security.
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Runtime Protection: Real-Time Defense against API Threats
Runtime protection is designed to detect and mitigate security threats and vulnerabilities in real-time, using advanced machine learning techniques. While API gateways and WAFs offer basic protections like rate limiting and authentication enforcement, they often lack the ability to recognize more sophisticated threats.
For example, BOLA (Broken Object Level Authorization) attacks, which appear as regular API requests, can bypass these basic defenses. Runtime protection goes a step further by analyzing the interactions between API requests and responses, providing deeper insights to prevent such abuse and attacks.
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API Security Testing: Proactive Defense in Development
API security testing is crucial for identifying flaws and vulnerabilities early in the development process. By adopting a shift-left testing approach, organizations can detect issues before APIs go live, minimizing risks associated with deployment.
It’s important to distinguish API security testing from standard application testing or functionality checks. API security testing specifically targets vulnerabilities unique to APIs, such as authentication weaknesses or potential misuse, ensuring that the APIs are secure from the start.
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API Governance: Establishing Control and Consistency
API governance defines the rules and principles that guide the creation, deployment, and management of APIs across an organization. A strong governance framework ensures consistency, transparency, and trust, especially when APIs are developed by different teams or third-party contractors.
Implementing governance practices helps maintain secure, consistent APIs while fostering collaboration and alignment across teams. It ensures that security standards are consistently followed and that the APIs remain aligned with the organization’s overall security policies.
How Akamai Enhances API Security
Akamai offers an integrated API security solution that addresses all of the above pillars. With Akamai’s security tools, organizations can:
- Build and maintain a comprehensive inventory of APIs, discovering hidden or unknown APIs.
- Identify and remediate configuration errors, security gaps, and vulnerabilities.
- Detect and prevent API misuse, abuse, and attacks in real-time.
- Develop secure APIs quickly without compromising speed or performance.
- Implement a robust API governance program that ensures security and compliance across the board.
Conclusion
Securing APIs requires a multifaceted approach, from discovery to governance. By focusing on the essential pillars of discovery, posture management, runtime protection, testing, and governance, organizations can build a strong security posture to defend against API-specific threats. Akamai’s comprehensive API security suite provides the tools necessary to secure, manage, and optimize APIs throughout their lifecycle, ensuring businesses can innovate securely and confidently.