Everything You Need To Know About API Security Tools (FAQs)
What Is An API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. APIs are used to communicate between products and services that haven’t been designed to be compatible. You can think of an API like an adaptor – it is a way of making two separate software technologies compatible.
APIs are predominantly used by developers when creating new applications and programs. They can use an API to combine two pre-existing technologies, thereby enhancing their own solution.
One of the major benefits of using an API is that it can vastly speed up the development and implementation of new applications. Rather than having to spend time and resource designing custom code, an API can allow you to combine technologies with ease.
What Is API Security?
APIs (Application Programming Interface) are used to enable two or more applications that were not originally designed to be compatible, to work together and communicate with each other. APIs tend to be set pieces of code that can be inserted wholesale into new developments, allowing data to be pulled from one application, and used by the other.
APIs increase the use cases and versatility of your applications and software, allowing you to achieve more, without having to develop entirely new applications. The problem, however, arises precisely because of this ease of use. APIs can be inserted wholesale during app development, then distributed endlessly to other applications. This means that any security weaknesses or vulnerabilities in the original API could be unknowingly distributed across all other connected applications.
As over 80% of internet traffic runs through APIs, securing against these vulnerabilities is absolutely essential. API security solutions will scan APIs for vulnerabilities, then alert relevant users to the threat. They give detailed, contextual information regarding the threat, with actionable intelligence explaining how the vulnerability can be addressed. Some solutions can also carry out automatic patch deployment, thereby addressing the threat, improving remediation time, and decreasing human workload.
How Do API Security Solutions Work?
API security solutions will take several steps to address the vulnerabilities and risks associated with APIs. First, API security tools will conduct an inventory to discover and catalog all APIs that are in use. This should be an ongoing process, to ensure that new APIs are identified swiftly.
“Zombie” and “Shadow” APIs are particularly important to track. These are outdated APIs that are no longer monitored or maintained and APIs that are created and deployed under the radar, out with an organization’s knowledge, respectively. It may well be the case that you use an API that itself relies on another API to function.
All discovered APIs can then be scanned to identify any vulnerabilities. This could include fundamental programming errors or misconfigurations with the way they are deployed in your network.
Next, the solution needs to decide how to respond to the vulnerabilities. At this stage, admins should be able to access the information regarding APIs and their risk. Admins do not, necessarily, need to be alerted immediately if an API poses a risk. However, if, for instance, the API security solution is able to deploy a patch and remediate a risk, then this should be an automated process. Automated remediation also reduces alert fatigue, and ensures that threats are addressed swiftly, giving less opportunity for the loophole to be exploited. Where patching is not possible, admins should be given adequate contextual and actionable intelligence that will allow them to respond to the threat. It is very helpful if a security solution can provide a prioritized list of API risks, suggesting which issues should be resolved first.
API vulnerability solutions should provide developers with adequate contextual and actionable intelligence that will allow them to respond to the threat. The vulnerability scanning process should be ongoing, including monitoring system upgrades and the introduction of new software. This way, your infrastructure will be protected throughout its entire lifecycle, and you know that security has been built into the foundations of your systems.
What Are The Benefits Of API Security?
As APIs are integrated so deeply into applications that many organizations rely on, it is crucial that they are secure. If successfully exploited, APIs can allow attackers into the heart of your infrastructure, making remediation complex and costly. API security tools can identify and address some of these vulnerabilities. In this section, we’ll explore some more benefits of API security tools.
Continuous Scanning – API security tools will continually scan your APIs to identify any vulnerabilities and threats. This ensures that admins can be alerted quickly, reducing the time that a vulnerability can be exploited.
Automatic Threat Remediation And Insights – Depending on the nature of the vulnerability, an API security solution should be able to respond to threats automatically and close loopholes. This will reduce alert fatigue and improve response times. If the threat cannot be addressed automatically, it should give admins detailed, contextual intelligence explaining how the threat can be resolved.
Technology Agnostic – API security solutions can work across a range of technologies as they use JSON languages and HTTP requests. JSON is language independent, but uses a similar format to C, C+, C++, Java, Perl, and Python. This allows developers to use a range of languages when developing APIs and implementing API security solutions.
What Are The Key Features Of An API Solution?
When looking for an API solution, it can be complicated to decipher what features are offered and how they will benefit your organization. In this section, we’ll cover the top features that you should look out for in an API security solution.
- API Discovery – Your solution should conduct automatic API discovery to identify where APIs are in use, so that these areas can be monitored. While some APIs will be obvious, your solution should identify “Zombie” and “Shadow” APIs as well. “Zombie APIs” are outdated APIs that are no longer monitored or maintained. “Shadow APIs” are created and deployed under the radar, without an organization’s knowledge.
- API Threat Testing – This feature allows you to take a proactive stance to understand the scope and scale of a threat. Rather than simply identifying where a vulnerability is, threat testing will probe that vulnerability to understand its significance and potential repercussions.
- API Security Scoring – While this isn’t an essential feature, some solutions will give APIs a score relating to the relative risk. This prioritization allows organizations to focus on remediating the most urgent risks.
- Automatic Remediation – Once a vulnerability is detected, your API security tool should automatically remediate the vulnerability and secure your organization. Potential vulnerabilities should be tracked, with admins notified of threats and developments.
- DevOps Integration – You’ll want to ensure that your solution can integrate effectively with your DevOps environment so that you can ensure new software is secure from inception. It is much more effective to build security into the foundation of design, rather than implement it as an addon after.
How Can You Best Set Up An API?
There are a couple of settings and configurations that will help to ensure that your API is secure and as effective as possible. In this section, we’ll explain how APIs can be properly secured, giving you the best chance of catching vulnerabilities, beyond using API scanning and security tools.
Implement rate limits – DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks operate by repeatedly requesting access from your API until it is overwhelmed. The API is unable to handle such a high volume, so shuts down. By implementing rate limiting features you can prevent this from occurring. This limits the number of requests that can be made to your API, ensuring that they stay within a set boundary and traffic volume is restricted to manageable limits.
Comprehensive logging and monitoring – to ensure that attacks and anomalies are identified, keeping comprehensive records allows you to spot anomalies quicker. Rates will fluctuate over time; that is only natural. When stats do start to alter, you will want to check if this is within usual bounds, or if it is an exceptional level of variation. If you keep comprehensive logs, you can quickly identify if the real-time statistics are abnormal.