Application Programming Interfaces, more commonly known by their acronym API, are an integral part of data infrastructure. By serving as a pathway that allows different systems to communicate with one another, APIs have become essential to how everything from mobile applications to complex cloud systems function.
Considering how vital they are in data infrastructure, API security should be a top concern for businesses. Although useful, APIs can also present a security issue if they are not properly configured and defended.
In this article, we’ll explore the importance of API security and touch on the best practices that businesses can use to ensure API security and keep their APIs safe.
The Importance of API Security
In the software developer world, APIs are often thought of as bridges. They connect one system to another, allowing them to communicate with one another and transfer data. A common example of this is a weather application, which uses an API to receive data from a meteorological office.
Due to their extensive utility, APIs are fundamental parts of many infrastructural systems:
- Cloud Applications: Cloud applications often rely on several distributed servers with third-party components, platforms, and services, all using APIs to connect to one another and exchange information.
- Mobile Applications: Mobile applications rely on a constant stream of data from host servers to change what the app shows, record user inputs, and record use data.
- IoT Devices: Internet of Things devices are any electronic that connects to the internet. For example, IoT digital sensors might record the temperature of a logistics truck, ensuring the medicine that it transports never exceeds a certain temperature. In this example, the sensors would use APIs to transfer temperature data to a main server, facilitating fast and precise data exchange.
Yet, despite how useful APIs are, the high volume of data that moves across them also turns them into a target. According to data from Statista, nearly 60% of developers are worried about data exfiltration from APIs, and 52% are worried that there are APIs they currently rely on that expose their private data.
Even a simple application could have numerous APIs active at any one time, making comprehensive API security a priority for businesses.
Best Practices for API Security
Due to how vital APIs are to the modern data infrastructure, they’re not going to fade away or be replaced by another technology any time soon. With this in mind, it’s vital to deploy the best API security practices to ensure your business can make the most of this technology without introducing vulnerabilities into your system.
As there is a wide assortment of potential threats, businesses should endeavor to incorporate the following range of best API security practices into their current security approach:
- Use API Gateways: An API gateway sits at the perimeter of an API and monitors all traffic in and out of the API. This gateway will meticulously monitor traffic, filtering out any requests that seem unusual or suspicious. API gateways provide a level of advanced filtering, helping to reduce the likelihood of a malicious attack entering your system.
- Encrypt Data: When transferring data between an API and a client, it should always be encrypted. Where possible, make use of protocols like HTTPS and secure your API-to-client connection with an SSL. Encryption helps to keep your data safe while in transit to avoid hijacking.
- Update Systems When Possible: Regularly updating a system is one of the most effective ways to avoid any vulnerabilities that the developers have found since the last updates. Developers of a product will constantly comb through it to try and find new vulnerabilities. In each new update, they’ll include patches to get rid of any vulnerabilities they’ve found. Updating to the most recent push of something will ensure you have the most secure version possible.
- Use Authentication: Perhaps the most extensive form of protection when it comes to keeping an API safe from malicious intent is to introduce an authentication system. When a user interacts with an API, this system will require them to enter their user information. A business can couple this approach with MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) to then ensure that only authorized people can use log-in information.
While these best practices are far from extensive, they represent some of the most essential integrations or adaptations that a business should make when working with APIs.
By starting as early as possible, carefully reviewing the current security systems in place to protect APIs, and working to add more layers of cybersecurity defense, businesses can make sure that their APIs are as secure as possible.
Over time, as new vulnerabilities are identified, developers can implement new strategies to enhance API security and decrease the likelihood of data exfiltration from these systems.
Protecting APIs Against Exploitation
Beyond just implementing API security tools into your business, it is also useful to use security tools that help to reduce the ability for hackers to interact with your API systems. For example, a WAF or WAAP solution will help to block any traffic to your APIs that seems to contain malicious intent.
By combining secure coding practices and API security initiatives with broader security solutions like these, your business will be able to rely on API systems without worrying about their security. When treated with care, APIs can be a highly secure piece of data infrastructure that your business can leverage to send data between devices or systems.
