The Top 10 API Security Tools

Invicti API Security ensures your APIs are thoroughly tested and protected against potential breaches. Invicti API Security integrates into existing developer workflows, where it effectively and accurately identifies hidden, lost, or forgotten APIs within your software development lifecycle. It offers scanning for REST, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs, ensuring that you receive comprehensive coverage with built-in security checks and the ability to import and discover API definitions. These security checks combine proof-based scanning technology with dynamic application security testing (DAST) to help streamline remediation efforts.

Invicti API Security also offers AI-powered API detection, risk prediction, and threat response to help combat threats that try to circumvent your security infrastructure using AI. Overall, we recommend Invicti API Security for organizations of all sizes looking to integrate security into their software development processes, but particularly those with a large number of API calls who are looking for an AI-backed solution.

Acunetix (by Invicti) is a web application and API security platform that enables developers to discover, test, and patch vulnerabilities within APIs and web apps, without disrupting development workflows. The platform plugs easily into your software development lifecycle, thanks to out-of-the-box integrations with popular development tools like Jira and Jenkins. By integrating with existing development pipelines, it can test all endpoints automatically, which allows it to identify vulnerabilities before they reach production.

Once deployed, Acunetix combines DAST and IAST scanning, which allows it to automatically discover hidden and undocumented APIs, giving you more visibility into previously unknown vulnerabilities. Acunetix then carries out definition imports and in-depth security checks on discovered APIs to find exploitable vulnerabilities, with support for REST, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs. It delivers vulnerability reports as soon as issues are detected, even before the full scan is finished, providing you instantly with detailed, actionable information that you can use to prioritize remediation actions. These reports include proof of exploit to help eliminate false positives. Overall, we recommend Acunetix for any development team looking to remediate API or web app vulnerabilities more efficiently.

42Crunch empowers developers to build and automate API security into their tools during the software development process. This gives them extended visibility and control over how security policies are configured. There are two strands to this platform – API Security Testing and API Threat Protection. The solution carries out a security audit where it analyzes over 300 aspects, then provides actionable intelligence on any vulnerabilities that need fixing. It also distinguishes between legitimate API traffic and attack attempts.

Once information has been gathered, the solution provides continuous tracking of potential vulnerabilities – such as data leakage, misconfiguration, or authentication errors. 42Crunch API is also able to test live endpoints to further reduce risk. The platform’s ongoing monitoring ensures that any updates or changes to your code are automatically checked to identify vulnerabilities. We would recommend 42Crunch API for medium sized organizations that need a solution that effectively identifies errors and confirms valid code.

Founded in 2018, APISec identifies the most serious vulnerabilities hidden within your APIs. The solution automatically runs custom attack playbooks to identify security flaws before your code reaches production. Common flaws that the platform can identify include BOLA, ABAC, and RBAC. It provides DevOps teams with critical alerts of vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipeline. As you address issues, the APIsec University ensures that your users understand and act in accordance with common regulatory frameworks.

APISec allows you to eliminate repetitive manual tasks – such as testing – thereby improving efficiency and reducing human led tasks. The solution even offers free scanning prior to purchase, which helps you to understand how the platform will benefit your organization specifically. We would recommend APISec for smaller organizations that are looking to test their code and API integrations prior to release.

Cequence is a Sunnyvale, CA, based company that has developed an open-source, AI-powered software platform to protect APIs. The solution is designed to prevent vulnerability exploits and bot attacks. Cequence begins by discovering and inventorying your APIs to understand attack surface area and identify vulnerabilities. The platform then provides real-time attack prevention and extensive drilldown into findings.

Cequence Security can scale as your organization grows to ensure your attack surface area is always understood and protected. The platform provides effective and comprehensive security with a wide range of useful tools and features. The interface is straightforward to use, allowing you to focus your attention on critical areas. We would recommend Cequence Security for small to medium sized organizations that need an effective and robust solution.

Data Theorem is based in Palo Alto, CA, and provides SAST, DAST, and RASP to ensure API security, alongside web, mobile, and cloud security. The solution inventories your APIs, before conducting comprehensive scanning to “hack” your APIs and identify vulnerabilities. It automatically triages and remediates issues before a breach occurs and prior to your application going to market. This ensures that security is at the forefront of your development process.

Data Theorem allows you to compile compliance reports for PCI, GCPE, CCPA, HIPAA, FTC, OWASP, MITRE, and NIST frameworks, amongst others. The platform’s reports and dashboards provide a good deal of contextual information, ensuring that developers understand vulnerabilities in their code in detail. These reports also do a good job at eliminating noise to help developers focus on relevant findings. We would recommend Data Theorem for medium to larger organizations that need a proactive solution to provide extensive contextual information regarding API threats.

Based in London, UK, Intruder is a proactive vulnerability monitoring platform that identifies vulnerabilities, then suggests the simplest, yet most effective, means of remediation. The cloud-based platform allows you to run custom security checks to identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations – it uses the OWASP Top 10 API security list as a reference for this. Scans can be automated to run regularly and consistently, and the intelligence that’s gathered is prioritized to highlight the most urgent findings, as well as detailing relevant remediation advice.

Intruder is easy to set up and can begin providing valuable information very quickly. The intelligence it provides is clearly categorized and explained, allowing you to remediate found issues effectively. It is worth noting that Intruder is a comprehensive vulnerability management platform – it identifies threats from across your servers, cloud systems, websites, and endpoint devices. We would, therefore, recommend Intruder for IT teams that are looking for a comprehensive vulnerability management platform that goes beyond providing solely API protection.

Salt Security uses an extensive cloud database of known APIs and attack methods, combined with advanced AI and ML capabilities to provide effective API coverage against known and emerging threats. The platform automatically discovers your APIs (including zombie and shadow APIs), thereby ensuring that no access points are left unprotected. Then, through its analysis of millions of APIs and attacks, Salt Security provides context into vulnerabilities and predicts where the next API attack will come from.

Salt Security’s AI technology provides effective issue detection and API protection. The platform allows you to baseline normal API behavior, then to send remediation insights to your developers as soon as they are calculated. Salt Security’s analysis is sensitive enough to detect reconnaissance activity, allowing bad actors to be blocked before they can gain any useful information. We would recommend this solution for organizations of all sizes that require a comprehensive and advanced API security solution.

Traceable is a San Francisco-based cybersecurity company that focuses on securing APIs in context. The platform is built around a comprehensive data lake, allowing it to effectively manage security posture, provide threat protection and management across the entire software development lifecycle. Traceable is designed to block all known and unknown API attacks (from both internal and external accounts), informed by the OWASP web top 10. Through utilizing the information stored in the data lake, you can identify threats before they are mature enough to attack.

Traceable is easy to use, without sacrificing effectiveness or customization. It can be flexibly deployed and configured to ensure that it meets your organization’s specific requirements. It also offers integrations with other third-party threat defence systems like web application firewalls to ensure there are no coverage gaps. We would recommend Traceable for organizations with small IT teams that need to maximize visibility and provide a robust response to API threats.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Wallarm is a dedicated API security tool that provides robust protection in cloud-native environments, for security and DevOps teams that need to secure applications and prevent unauthorized network access. The platform provides effective security for all your APIs, with support for REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and WebSocket protocols. If an issue is identified before a patch is available, the platform monitors it and prevents exploitation. This, and other types of remediation such as bot and DDoS prevention, are carried out in real-time, thereby limiting the time that an attacker has to strike.

Wallarm’s API Security Platform uses advanced rate limiting protection and behavioral analysis to provide protection against bots and Layer-7 DDoS attacks. The platform presents relevant data and statistics via a clean, intuitive dashboard. We would recommend Wallarm for small to medium organizations that require comprehensive protection to secure their APIs.