Incorporating APIs into the software development process enables organizations to increase internal interoperability, decrease development time, and significantly expand product functionality.
Given the rapid adoption of connected and interdependent technologies such as IoT, demand for increasingly complex APIs will continue to increase. Organizations must rethink their approach and continuously refine their data security procedures as threat actors continue to attack APIs.
Rapid advancements in API technology have transformed software development, necessitating a rethinking of how organizations manage and organize all APIs. Investments in the API economy are gaining importance to secure future revenue and business growth.
Incorporating APIs into the software development process enables organizations to increase internal interoperability, decrease development time, and significantly expand product functionality.
API connects elements of software architecture that facilitate the functionality of front-end applications by acting as an interaction mediator. Currently, API can support order placement, payment processing, and access to professional services. However, this does not mean APIs are flawless.
API exacerbates security vulnerabilities on machines in homes, offices, and factories, from garage door openers to expensive tractors. Due to the open nature of API feeds, the service is both appropriate and risky. APIs facilitate partners’ access to data and information but also introduce vulnerabilities.
Also Read: Strategies to Manage Vulnerabilities and Mitigate Them Effectively
Here are several measures security teams can take to mitigate API security issues:
Determine the risks
When software developers work on APIs, they focus on a small subset of services to enhance their capabilities. As different components link the front and back ends, most of them fail to think outside the box, which can result in several problems. Therefore, organizations should determine the potential risks associated with APIs during development.
Conduct a Legal Audit
A slight change to an API could result in a change in how it collects user data. Updates involving confidential information may violate privacy policies or regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Consequently, you should conduct a legal audit of the API inventory. When releasing new API updates, teams should consider security and legal implications during the development phase. In addition, with a continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) pipeline, these modifications should be made frequently.
Minimize Data Sharing
Data is frequently shared between APIs, APIs and applications, APIs and end-users, and between various organizations in order for a product or service to function. This increases the likelihood that a cyberattack will occur. Therefore, organizations should limit data sharing in order to minimize their exposure. They may choose OAuth, which restricts data sharing across multiple platforms to an authorization key rather than the user’s credentials. In other words, in the event of a security breach, the attacker is unable to extract any useful information.
Integrate input sanitization
Functions utilize the majority of user inputs to access the database and retrieve information, making them a security risk. For instance, code injection is a security risk in which the threat actor executes code via an input field on the API server. To mitigate this threat, organizations must choose input sanitization. As a cybersecurity strategy, input sanitization filters out unwanted characters and strings from input data that are ultimately sent to the API. This prevents malicious actors from executing and injecting malicious code in order to compromise the API server.
Also Read: Top Three API Security Practices for CISOs
Avoid misconfiguration
Deploying an API within a cloud ecosystem or using containers can compromise the API’s security. In fact, according to an IBM report, misconfigured APIs account for two-thirds of all cloud breaches. Therefore, organizations deploying APIs should ensure their configuration is correct. They should monitor security misconfiguration elements such as unpatched systems, images that are not hardened, out-of-date or absent TLS, etc.
Given the rapid adoption of connected and interdependent technologies such as IoT, demand for increasingly complex APIs will continue to increase. As threat actors continue to attack APIs, organizations will need to rethink their approach and continuously refine their data security procedures.
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