Digital Transformation
is Built on Secure APIs
APIs are the foundation of enterprise digital transformation initiatives. They help create new revenue streams, form successful partnerships and streamline internal operations. Given their critical role in digital transformation, organizations are sharpening their focus to ensure the APIs providing access to internal systems and data are secure. This increased focus doesn’t just reduce the risk of breach, it also reduces the possibility of business disruption. Learn why APIs are an increasingly attractive target for hackers in the one-minute whiteboard video below.
The Expanding API
Attack Surface
On average, today’s enterprises host over 400 APIs...that they know about. As that number rises, news of API-related breaches becomes more common. API vulnerabilities targeted in these breaches range from a complete lack of access control to missing entitlement checks to attacks using stolen credentials. And when an API breach occurs, it’s often not detected for months—and years in some cases. With strategic business initiatives on the line, a stronger approach to API security is needed. It starts by configuring access control with a defense in depth approach, and is augmented by intelligent API cybersecurity. Is your API cybersecurity enough to withstand today’s attack landscape? Check out our infographic to find out.
Our Formula for API Security
- Authentication Authority
APIs are typically built to be accessed by diverse client applications and user types, requiring support from multiple identity providers to serve as sources of authentication. An authentication authority enables organizations to continuously collect, validate and provide user identity, device and context data from these sources to ensure APIs are only accessed under the right circumstances by including this information in access tokens.
- API Access Management
Business and security policies dictate which API resources are accessible by certain client applications and users, as well as what actions clients are able to perform (e.g., GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) on that API resource. API access management helps organizations enforce these policies, limiting users to only transactions permitted by the authorization scopes contained in their access tokens.
- Fine-grained, Dynamic Authorization
A flexible, externalized authorization layer provides detailed access control and data protection requirements driven by regulations, business analysts and customers—without friction and lengthy development cycles. A user-friendly, collaborative interface for policy administration, testing and data access governance puts fine-grained, dynamic authorization for APIs directly in the hands of business users. Tackle API data breaches and abuse with policies to evaluate, modify and filter the body of an API request or response based on any number of attributes, including real-time risk scores, data source lookups and more.
- Risk-based Authentication
Applications leverage APIs to perform a wide variety of transactions, with varying levels of sensitivity or risk. By enabling step-up authentication and embedding multi-factor authentication into your application, higher-risk API calls such as financial transactions or account profile changes can be confirmed with a simple fingerprint or face scan, for example. By only stepping up authentication for risky API calls, user experience is optimized.
- AI-powered API Cybersecurity
Bad actors with stolen credentials and malicious insiders leave organizations vulnerable to attack, even if they have rock-solid API authentication and authorization strategies in place. API cybersecurity uses AI to learn expected and normal behavior for each API, and it uses that knowledge to identify and automatically stop attacks that target API infrastructures.
Architect API Security for Zero Trust
APIs represent some of the strongest reasons for organizations to move from perimeter-based security toward Zero Trust. Zero Trust API security includes an authentication authority, an API access gateway and data access governance that provide coarse, medium and fine-grained enforcement for access to resources provided by APIs. By adding the ability to track all API traffic while identifying and blocking cyberattacks and abuse on APIs, a Zero Trust approach to API security can be achieved.
Keep Your Data
Secure With AI
The efforts of hackers using stolen credentials and tokens often go undetected by existing security controls as they appear to be valid users. This enables them to reverse engineer and identify vulnerabilities in APIs that let them steal data and take over other accounts. This attack pattern represents the majority of all recent highly publicized API-based breaches, where hackers took over accounts, disrupted operations, exfiltrated data and launched DDoS attacks using stolen credentials. AI-powered API cybersecurity combines real-time security and AI analytics to detect, report and block cyberattacks on data and applications exposed via APIs. The solution looks for anomalous behavior and identifies stolen tokens and other types of advanced API attacks missed by traditional API security tools—all while providing complete visibility into all API activity for forensic and compliance reporting.
Kuppingercole Reveals the
Dark Side of the API Economy
The analyst firm’s research finds that one of the most common problems organizations face is a lack of visibility around their APIs. Despite their popularity, many organizations tend to downplay API-related risks. Learn more about KuppingerCole’s findings and recommendations on how to design a comprehensive and future-proof API security strategy.
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See how Ping can help you stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving digital world.
