Enhancing API Security: Risks, Solutions and Best Practices

Top 8 API security risks and how to eliminate them

Here are the eight main cybersecurity risks that your APIs might be facing and ways to reduce them:

1. Poor coding

Financial services companies, banks, IT consultants, and telcos are more prone to common weakness enumerations (CWEs), even despite paying increased attention to security. 

Solution: Ensure the implementation of the code review process to identify vulnerable and security-sensitive code.

2. Inadequate validation and poor access control

Undesirable API traffic intervention may cost you API keys, passwords, and usernames. Inefficient validation is what opens the gates to hackers.

Solution: Implement a two-step validation: client-side validation and server-side validation. Identify the information that might be used to target your vulnerable areas and restrict your APIs from including this data in responses (output escaping). Also, always verify SSL certificates. 

To further enhance access control, use tokens. First, you should create trusted identities and then assign tokens to them to control access to services and resources. Use such standards as OAuth 2.0 and JWT.

3. Uncertainty about API utilization

Leaving APIs and their utilization numbers untracked may expose APIs to security risks such as credential stuffing and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Solution: Enhance API visibility and monitoring: identify traffic patterns, automate risk assessment and make sure it is continuous. 

4. Accountability

API security should be in place for both the development and utilization sides: an engineer cannot prevent the risks that come from inadequate or unsafe API use. 

Solution: Maintain strict control over the access to APIs. Expose only the determined amount of data and use rate limiting (here’s a list of apps that can help you with the latter). Use sniffers to identify security issues and check APIs for data leaks.

5. XML risks

Malformed and invalid XML documents increase the chances of attacks from server-side request forgery to brute forcing. Such documents require more processing time and lack schema or have unrestricted schema, respectively. 

Solution: Apart from following basic schemas for XML security assessment, consider document normalizing and validation options. Find more how-tos with code snippets in this OWASP cheat sheet.

6. API incompetence

Improper and excessive use of APIs may lead to performance degradation (bad news for your API) or go against the terms of service (huge expenses for you and the termination of service from a third-party API). 

Solution: Arrange for proper API management and monitoring. In this article we discuss how to manage APIs effectively. 

7. Poor or no security practices

Inadequate security configurations, poor API format, accepting data from untrusted sources, no monitoring of vulnerabilities or password configuration limits—the list can go on, and malicious attacks are just as numerous. 

Solution: Develop a robust security strategy before the start of API building/utilizing and ensure that everything on the list is up and running, from general security checks to encryption processes. Continuous assessment is key, and it’s important to update your security routine once in a while. 

Find out more on how to enhance security during API integration in our interview with the CTO of LifeYield, Enis Simsek, and the CTO of AdvisorPeak, Darren Collins. Here you’ll find the best cybersecurity courses for tech leaders.

8. Neglecting terms of service

Being unaware of what’s available with APIs your enterprise uses is a bad idea. That’s where problems with the quality of service stem from. Another possible negative consequence of skipping the terms and conditions is skewed data tracking on the customer’s side.

Solution: Make sure everyone involved with APIs reads the terms and conditions from the beginning to the end and understands it fully.