APIs have become the most important part of the IT infrastructure of businesses with digital transformation. Although APIs make it easier to connect and share data between applications, they also bring new security risks. Cyber attacks against sensitive data in today’s digital environment demonstrate this risk. Therefore, every business should determine and implement a strong API security strategy. In this blog post, we discussed the importance of API security and the most effective methods you can apply to protect your data.
What is API Security?
Application Programming Interface (API) is a technology that enables data exchange between applications. It enables the integration of different systems by facilitating the communication of different applications with each other.
APIs enable systems to communicate and exchange information in an age of digital transformation. In this way, businesses have the power to integrate their services and encourage innovation.
Unfortunately, despite the advantages of using APIs, data has become the target of cyber attacks. This showed that API security is very important. API security refers to various security measures to protect data integrity and confidentiality from potential threats and vulnerabilities.
The Importance of API Security in Today’s Digital Environment
APIs exist between third-party developers and the business’s resources, providing services to businesses, customers, employees, and others. It contains confidential information and trade secrets belonging to many stakeholders. When an endpoint is attacked, it provides direct access to sensitive information. This causes a security vulnerability. A vulnerability related to APIs can damage a business’s reputation, disrupt its infrastructure, sabotage its operations and cause huge financial losses. Therefore, API security is a very important issue to protect sensitive data.
What Are Common Attacks on APIs?
Before talking about what you need to do to secure APIs, it is useful to know what API attacks can happen. API vulnerabilities can occur in many different ways. The most common API security threats are as follows:
Injection Attacks
Injection attacks are malicious users taking advantage of security vulnerabilities to inject malicious code into the application interface and thus take over the system. APIs with gaps in authentication and verification become vulnerable to injection attacks.
We can give SQL injection as an example of an injection attack. SQL injection occurs by modifying input to access a database and revealing sensitive information.
Stolen Authentication (Authorization Vulnerabilities)
The easiest way to access APIs is to capture an authorized user’s credentials or authentication tokens. This vulnerability allows cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to data and resources.
Man in the Middle Attack
A man-in-the-middle attack occurs when a cyber attacker intercepts a request between the end user and the API. This way, criminals can alter or steal the content of communications between two ends, such as payment information.
Denial of Service Attacks (DoS Attacks)
Attacks carried out through API requests aim to reduce the performance of the web server, render it dysfunctional or crash it. Usually, such attacks are carried out simultaneously from multiple malicious sources (distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack) and put the server’s resources under pressure.
How Do I Secure My API Security?
In the digital age, businesses need APIs to flow data between their applications and systems. Therefore, threats to APIs will not cause API usage to disappear. Instead, it must implement strong API security measures to eliminate threats. API security practices can ensure that sensitive data is protected against cyber attacks.
API Authentication
The first way to prevent unauthorized access is to implement an authentication system with valid credentials before users can access data. This application requires the use of API keys, tokens, or multi-factor authentication.
API Authorization
Authorization sets the limit for users to access information. In other words, it ensures that authenticated users have permission to access certain resources through APIs. These permissions need to be updated regularly to maintain a secure API environment and prevent unauthorized access.
API Login Validation
Security of data transmission includes protecting the communication between clients and the API by encrypting the transferred information. To be secure, using protocols such as HTTPS ensures the security of data flow and ensures that sensitive information is transmitted securely.
API Rate Limiting
Rate limiting, which limits the number of API requests, restricts the requests the user or application can make within a certain time period. This reduces the risk of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and prevents API misuse.
API Auditing and Logging
When it comes to API security, it is necessary to know what users are accessing and what they are doing with the information they access. To ensure data security, log every API request and audit logs of user activities should be maintained.
Secure API Keys
API keys are used to control access to the API and prevent unauthorized access. To ensure the security of API keys, it is necessary to change the keys periodically, revoke access to compromised keys, and limit key access to only what is necessary for the relevant application or user.
