As we continue our Summer School blog series, let's focus on a vital aspect of modern application security: the relationship between API posture governance, API security, and the constantly changing regulatory compliance landscape. In today's interconnected world, where APIs are crucial for digital interactions, organizations are challenged with securing their APIs while complying with complex regulations designed to protect sensitive data and critical infrastructure.

In today’s hyper-connected digital landscape, APIs are the lifeblood of innovation, powering everything from customer experiences to internal operations. However, with this growing reliance on APIs comes a dark side—zombie and shadow APIs. These hidden, forgotten, or undocumented endpoints present significant security risks that traditional approaches simply can’t address.

In API security, organizations frequently encounter a tough decision: whether to opt for the flexibility and scalability of a SaaS solution or the data control and privacy of an on-premises deployment. Salt Security's hybrid deployment option provides a solution that combines the advantages of a SaaS solution with the assurance of data privacy, offering the best of both worlds for organizations.

The recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) settlement with TracFone Wireless, Inc. (TracFone) for $16 million highlights a critical vulnerability within the mobile telecommunications industry: API security. The investigation revealed unauthorized access to customer data through weaknesses in TracFone's mobile carrier APIs. This incident reminds mobile carriers to prioritize robust API security measures to safeguard customer data and ensure network integrity.

In the fast-paced world of cybersecurity, every second counts. When an API attack occurs, the speed at which your security team can detect, understand, and respond to the threat can mean the difference between a minor incident and a major data breach. This is where Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) comes into play. MTTR is a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures the average time it takes to resolve a security incident, from the moment it's detected to the point where it's fully mitigated.

Securing your API ecosystem is increasingly complex, leaving organizations unsure where to begin. Gartner's 2024 Market Guide for API Protection offers clear guidance: Understanding your API attack surface and prioritizing your security efforts is crucial. Once you have visibility into your API landscape, you can implement appropriate security measures to protect your APIs from abuse and access violations.

Hello, My name is Chen, and I work as a threat intelligence analyst at Salt Security. Every day, I dive into the complex world of cybersecurity, uncovering the hidden threats that hide in our digital lives. Today, I'd like to take you on a journey through the evolving landscape of API threats. APIs are the quiet helpers of the digital world, allowing software applications to communicate easily with each other.

The prevalence of APIs in today's digital environment is undeniable. They are crucial for modern applications, enabling seamless communication and data exchange between different software components. The rise of AI and machine learning has further accelerated API adoption, not only for accessing data and resources but also for rapid API development and deployment.

The API security landscape is changing rapidly, and cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated. According to the Salt Labs State of API Security Report 2024, API security incidents have more than doubled in the past 12 months, while API usage is rapidly increasing. Organizations are finding it challenging to keep up with the threats associated with expanding API ecosystems and fully understand their complex behavioral attributes.

As noted in the 2024 Gartner Market Guide for API Protection“API security governance is an emerging capability. It allows the administrator of the tool to define and enforce security policies. Unlike posture management, this is a top-down enforcement. It also allows for compliance reports for specific regulations to be generated automatically.” This capability is becoming increasingly important as organizations face a constantly evolving threat landscape.