Regardless of the techniques used, going big, expensive, and glossy – while potentially useful - doesn’t replace the need for a well-reasoned approach to securing assets founded on traditional activities and principles. Innumerable assets are housed behind APIs, and the widespread use of APIs means they are high-profile targets. Securing them is of the utmost importance.

Enterprises face a challenging environment: economic headwinds, efficiency, and cybersecurity resilience dominate board meeting discussions amid rapid changes in technology. APIs especially have gone from playing a minor role in digital operations to being a company’s most important, mission-critical connections. In today's digital age, APIs have become an essential component of many organizations' business strategies.

In 2013, hackers breached an HVAC provider’s network, giving them access to 40 million credit and debit card numbers from their biggest client: Target. It took years to repair the damage. Relying on third-party vendors is necessary but still presents a cybersecurity risk. How will the companies handle your clients’ data? How vulnerable are they to being hacked?

The latest Salt Labs State of API Security report is out, and we’re excited to share with you some of the key findings. The security industry news has frequently covered high-profile application programming interface (API) breaches over the past few years, so it’s no surprise that our research found that attackers have upped their activity. Salt Labs analyzed the past year of Salt customer data and found a 400% increase in unique attackers just over the last six months alone.

It’s no exaggeration to say that APIs are the backbone of the modern digital economy. API usage has seen staggering exponential growth over the last two decades with sources like Postman's 2022 State of the API Report illustrating just how embedded APIs are into our modern world. In 2022, the Postman API platform saw 20 million users and over 1 billion API requests created.

We’ve already had the first major API-related cybersecurity incidents for 2023. The T-Mobile API breach exposed the personally identifiable information (PII) of 37 million customers. The API attack had been going on since November but was not discovered and disclosed until January 19, illustrating the threat of the “low and slow” approach of API attacks, which are increasing at a steady pace.