Despite their capabilities and benefits, cloud-native applications also present several security challenges. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are among the top areas of vulnerability in these applications. This is not surprising. As organizations look to improve connectivity between digital services and increase data sharing between modern applications and systems, APIs are rapidly proliferating in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. According to Gartner, Inc., 82% of organizations use APIs internally and 71% use APIs provided by third parties such as SaaS vendors.
However, as more APIs are created and used in enterprise environments, they create a larger attack surface for security teams to defend against. APIs present unique attack vectors as they provide direct access to cloud applications and sensitive backend data stores. Even with strong infrastructure security in place, APIs can expose sensitive systems and data to potential threats—making their security a priority in protecting cloud environments.
To protect against API-related risks and improve API security posture, organizations need a comprehensive cloud-native application security platform (CNAPP). CNAPP provides critical visibility and proactive risk management by identifying misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and compliance issues in real-time throughout the application lifecycle. This integration approach also ensures that APIs are evaluated for security within the broader context of the cloud application, addressing potential threats at all layers of the cloud infrastructure. By integrating API security within CNAPP, organizations can effectively manage the complexity and scale of their cloud environment.
API Security Risks: What You Should Know
There is an important point to keep in mind when we talk about API security: its purpose is, ultimately, to protect cloud applications. Oftentimes, unsecured APIs expose cloud applications to threats, thus making securing APIs a critical component of an effective security strategy.
Unlike other cloud vulnerabilities, API vulnerabilities do not only come from insecure configurations at the infrastructure level. Rather, these risks often stem from insecure implementations at the code level, lack of visibility of security teams, and inadequate data protection practices:
- Source code vulnerability: This includes poor authentication and authorization, lack of input validation, and insecure coding practices. This vulnerability can cause usability issues within the API, by bypassing infrastructure-level protections. Findings in Microsoft’s State of Multicloud Risk Report for 2024 revealed serious concerns about API security. By 2023, 65% of repositories containing source code vulnerabilities remained in code for an average of 58 days. Many of these risks directly expose APIs to potential exploits, highlighting the urgent need for strong API security measures to protect cloud applications from malicious attacks.
When vulnerable APIs are deployed, they can quickly scale across cloud environments—potentially exposing sensitive data, employee and employee identities, internal systems, and more. This increase is driven by rapid development and deployment of APIs, now possible in weeks or even days thanks to open source code, AI-enabled development tools, and the rise of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Ad hoc or periodically scheduled security testing cannot keep up with this speed, underscoring the need for continuous and comprehensive API security procedures.
Currently, the responsibility to address API security falls largely on developers to adhere to best practices. However, developers are not always API security experts, leading to potential oversights. Instead, organizations should use an approach based on tools that developers have the right authentication skills and specifications and that includes monitoring from central security teams to ensure strong API security.
- Lack of Visibility: APIs are often hosted in different cloud environments and with different gateways and computing resources, making centralized management a challenge. This distribution can lead to the emergence of shadow APIs undocumented or monitored by security teams. Without clear visibility, it becomes difficult to effectively secure APIs—after all, you can’t secure what you don’t know is there. The complexity of API environments also makes it difficult for organizations to maintain an accurate inventory of all their APIs. Unmonitored and vulnerable APIs can slip through the cracks, and the rapid development and speed of deployment exacerbates these issues. As APIs continue to proliferate, implementing continuous API inventory discovery and management becomes increasingly important to ensure overall security.
- Data exposure: According to Gartner, current data shows that the average API breach leads to at least 10 times more leaked data than the average security breach. APIs often handle sensitive data. Ensuring that data is securely transmitted and stored is important. Inadequate data protection can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access, exposing valuable information to malicious actors. This can include personal information, financial data, intellectual property, and other sensitive records.
Securing APIs requires a different approach than securing cloud infrastructure. While infrastructure security focuses on policies and configurations at the control plane level, API security must address vulnerabilities and settings embedded within the application code itself. This highlights the need for a comprehensive strategy that includes both infrastructure and API security to effectively secure cloud applications.
3 Key Steps to Building a Strong API Security Strategy
To effectively strengthen your API security strategy, consider these three key steps, all of which can be improved with the installation of CNAPP:
- Discover and Assess Risk Exposures: Start by identifying all the APIs used throughout your organization. This includes writing both known and shadow APIsincluding third-party APIs from SaaS applications, for complete visibility. Once identified, assess risk exposure for each API by examining factors such as data sensitivity, access controls, usage patterns, and external exposure. This step is important to understand where the most significant risk lies and prioritize security efforts accordingly. Both CNAPP and API management solutions can simplify this process by providing tools for API discovery, inventory management, and ongoing risk assessment—ensuring that all APIs are accounted for and monitored. CNAPP can also help prioritize risks in context of the broader cloud application environment, making it easier to address the most critical vulnerabilities first.
- Harden APIs Against Vulnerabilities: Next, it’s important to test APIs against security best practices, including enforcing strong authentication and authorization. Refer to the OWASP API Security Top 10 guide as a benchmark for addressing common API vulnerabilities and understanding the top risks in API security. Ensuring secure coding practices and performing regular security checks are necessary but not sufficient. It is important to identify and strengthen security vulnerabilities at scale, which can be effectively managed automatically with CNAPP, including the use of dynamic testing and runtime configuration testing and API traffic analysis to identify vulnerabilities before they are exploited. This approach ensures continuous monitoring and that vulnerabilities are quickly remedied. API management is critical to this strategy, providing the tools to implement security policies and manage access controls to build effective defenses.
- Monitor and Protect APIs from Threats and Attacks: Even with strong security measures, it is important for security teams to monitor API traffic continuously to catch any threats that are able to bypass initial defenses. Advanced threat detection systems using machine learning are critical for identifying suspicious and anomalous activity in API traffic, including legitimate business abuse and common web threats. CNAPP solutions that include cloud-based threat protection for workloads in their offering are key to not only enabling this but also helping to consolidate incidents into threat detection at different levels. Web Application Firewalls (WAF) can help filter and block malicious traffic identified based on threat intelligence and threat protection rules while also providing protection against malicious bots. Meanwhile, DDoS protection can help protect against volume attacks. These layers come together to provide effective protection.
API security is an important part of modern digital infrastructure, given the large role APIs play in facilitating data exchange and communication between systems. To ensure that APIs are hardened against vulnerability, comprehensive security strategies are essential. By using CNAPP in conjunction with robust API management solutions, organizations can streamline their security processes, gain complete visibility, and maintain continuous monitoring. These measures are essential to protect the integrity and availability of applications in an increasingly connected digital environment.
Because Additional Informationdownload the white paper: “Building a comprehensive API security strategy: An integrated approach to API management and security” and visit the Microsoft cloud security solutions page.
- Gartner®, Hype Cycle for APIs, 2024, 02 July 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the US and other countries and is used here with permission. All rights reserved
- Gartner®, API Security Market Guide, 29 May 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries in the US and other countries and is used here with permission. All rights reserved
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