API Security Best Practices

Implementing a new API (Application Programming Interface) for your web application is one of the best moves in today’s digital world. The software interface offers a wide range of benefits for third-party developers looking to integrate with your app as well as the customer base who benefit from the integrations. On your end, it can increase profit margins since it helps boost traffic to your platform.

Unfortunately, APIs also provide a gateway for hackers to gain access to data stored on your server. Without proper security measures, sensitive information and other network resources are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. That’s why investment in API security is essential.

What is API Security and Why is it Important?

In basic terms, API security refers to practices and products used to prevent misuse or malicious attacks on APIs. The primary goal of implementing such security measures is to ensure all requests processed are authentic and authorized. API Management Security helps minimize the risk of data breaches by ensuring responses are safe from hackers’ prying eyes.

Modern organizations implement APIs to facilitate the exchange of information, often sensitive, between their systems and external clients. Therefore, a lack of proper security measures can grant hackers the keys to your confidential data.

Some of the most common API vulnerabilities include:

• Code injections
• Denial-of-service attack
• Stolen authentication
• Man-in-the-middle attack

Understanding these threats and what you are up against is essential to ensure you direct your efforts and resources accordingly.

API Security Best Practices

Implement Access Control

Implementing access control is the first step toward ensuring a secure API. As we’ve already mentioned, these software interfaces allow external users to view internal data. So, it is essential to introduce controls that dictate who or what accesses the system at any given time.

A perfect example of access control for API is a firewall (web app firewall or API gateway). It provides baseline protection against a wide range of attacks (especially injection-based attacks) by ensuring each user accesses the system through a secure protocol.

Implement Authentication

Besides access control, you can implement authentication to add an extra layer of security to your API. APIs need to verify the identity of the program or user that sent a request before processing it. The system can achieve that in several ways, including passwords and authentication tokens (a string of characters uniquely identifying a client).

Most modern organizations have implemented the OAuth protocol for API user authentication. The authentication framework is built on HTTP, making it a perfect fit for a wide range of APIs, including SOAP and REST APIs.

Implement Authorization

Once the API authenticates the source of the request, it needs a way to control access to authorized resources and methods. For instance, a user may have access to the API but isn’t allowed to add, update or delete data from the application database. In such a case, any request to contribute data through the API will be denied.

Typically, authorization is controlled by user roles since each role carries a unique set of permissions. Modern API developers have conformed to the concept of least privilege, which asserts that system users should be granted access to only resources and methods that fit their role. That is easier to implement since predefined roles already exist in every organizational setting.

Conduct Regular Security Tests

Regular risk assessment and management are essential to ensuring a secure API. Most organizations wait until there is an actual attack to implement new security measures. Unfortunately, such a reckless approach could lead to damaging data breaches.

If you have APIs in your applications, it is advisable to schedule regular security testing. In these sessions, your IT team or a third-party cyber security service should try to intentionally hack your API to identify vulnerabilities. Once you expose the risks, find the right way to deal with them before they become a threat to your sensitive data.

During the testing phase, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• Is authentication able to counter brute-force entry attempts?
• Are all requests and answers encrypted?
• How does the API respond to a sudden spike in user requests?
• Is the API working as expected?

API security testing is relatively complicated. It is therefore best to seek the assistance of an expert when you need it.