API Security Challenges

By Elena Marin and Roxana Ambrozie, QC Engineers, Cognizant Softvision

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a connection between two or more computers, respectively software applications. These connections have simple, well-defined rules that explain how computers or software applications communicate with each other. The use of APIs has been growing over the years, and as organizations move further to the cloud-native path, the use of APIs will continue to grow — along with potential security risks.

Today, APIs can face a lot of challenges when it comes to security. But before we dive into security issues, we must first understand what an API is and the role an API plays today. This white paper, API Security Challenges, covers the basics of APIs, including their evolution, how they work, and common protocols and architectures before discussing security challenges. We then present common API security vulnerabilities and types of attacks so that we can focus on making the attacker’s job more difficult.

Click here to download API Security Challenges.