Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

The Gartner research paper “What You Need to Do to Protect Your APIs” outlines key requirements for bolstering API security measures. In this blog post, we’ll delve deeper into these requirements as introduced by Gartner, explain their significance, and demonstrate how AppSentinels offers comprehensive solutions for each requirement. As per Gartner, the second step is to assess the security of these APIs.

On Friday April 12, Palo Alto disclosed that some versions of PAN-OS are not only vulnerable to remote code execution, but that the vulnerability has been actively exploited to install backdoors on Palo Alto firewalls. A patch is expected to be available on April 14th. The advisory from Palo Alto is here. Palo Alto has marked this vulnerability as critical and NVD has scored it a 10.0 with CVSSv3. Wallarm currently detects attacks against this vulnerability with no additional configuration required.

Simply put, APIs (short for application programming interface) are how machines, cloud workloads, automation and other non-human entities communicate with one another. They also represent an access point to highly sensitive company data and services. Almost every organization uses these machine interfaces, and their usage is only growing because they are essential to digital transformation and automation initiatives.

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) have become the backbone of many modern applications, and indeed the foundation of some businesses services. APIs enable seamless communication between applications, services and systems, allowing organisations to innovate, collaborate and deliver value to their customers. However, as reliance on APIs grows, so does the need for robust security measures to protect these critical digital assets from potential threats.

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) have proliferated widely, which increases their susceptibility to various vulnerabilities. In the realm of web applications, prime examples that stand out are SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs. Due to their inherent complexity and the dynamic nature of software ecosystems, common vulnerabilities include inadequate authentication mechanisms and injection attacks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).

APIs are foundational to modular application development. They support an organization’s internal services as well as provide a mechanism for customers to access certain services or datasets for their own applications. Because of the role that both internal and public-facing APIs play in applications, they are considered one of the top targets for threat actors.

Going to a vendor's Knowledge Base (KB) is often the first place practitioners go to get the product deployed or troubleshoot issues. Even with advanced search tools, historically, KBs have been challenging to find relevant content quickly, and navigating a KB can be frustrating. At Salt Security, not only do we want to make your job of securing APIs easier, but we also want to make getting the guidance you need easier, friendlier and more efficient.

“If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too. Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people’s accounts. If they know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it.” - Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. The entire digital landscape has evolved into a behemoth of sorts as the number of online attacks targeting individuals, businesses, and governments has risen steadily.