As cloud and Kubernetes have become a standard, security remains one of the top inhibitors to modern application development. To reduce security risks, organizations can’t manage access control on a cluster-by-cluster basis. And not finding a scalable approach leads to misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and failed compliance audits.
Let us travel back in time and picture a fort. Forts were huge with massively thick walls, doors, watch towers and a moat to protect them from attacks. There were several layers of defense to keep attackers at bay. An attacker might swim across the moat but still had to climb the high walls before entering the fort. Thus, an attacker might compromise a single layer, but having several layers makes it difficult for an attacker to enter the fort.
Published with permission from author Subbu Iyer, VP of Product Management, Cequence Security
Introduction
The recent rash of API security incidents (Peloton, Experian, Clubhouse, etc.) has no doubt forced many security and development teams to take a closer look at their API security posture to ensure they are not the next headline. Creating an inventory of all APIs exposed to external audiences is the most common starting point that organizations take when putting together or re-evaluating their API security program. With this inventory in place, the next step is to evaluate each exposed API for potential security risks, such as weak authentication or exposure of sensitive data in cleartext.
Whether you're working with on-premise, cloud, and/or third-party integrations, the questions remain the same: What is the client or user experience you need to offer? And how do you align your integration strategy with it? This Refcard explores fundamental patterns for authentication, polling, querying, and more, helping you assess your integration needs and approach the design, build, and maintenance of your API integrations in the most effective ways for your business case.
Simple, schematic, faster to develop, and quick deployments make APIs so popular and widely used. So, naturally, it brings various challenges to maintain its implementations and keep them secured from various threats, such as Man-in-the-Middle attacks, lack of XML encryptions, insecure endpoints, API URL parameters, and so on.
REST API has similar vulnerabilities as a web application. In this article, we will present a few common API vulnerabilities that every developer should be aware of and on the lookout for in their code.
