Mastering API Protocols to Fortify Your API Security

For decades now, organizations have come to increasingly rely on APIs as a “silent partner” in software development to help them operate, innovate, compete, and grow faster. Every API has a set of rules or API protocols that allow applications to communicate with each other and enable developers to access a software’s features or data without needing to understand its internal workings.

With that said, each API protocol introduces its own unique security risks that make organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches, which is why it’s important to understand them and determine how API security should be implemented to safeguard organizations’ business-critical assets.

In this blog, we’ll explore what API protocols are, the most popular API protocols, the need for API protocol security, and more.

What are API Protocols?

An API protocol is a set of rules, procedures, and constraints that govern how an API will operate, communicate, and transfer data. These protocols allow APIs to facilitate different applications to talk to, integrate, and inter-operate with each other.

Different API protocols vary in terms of their use cases, responsiveness, supported data formats, bandwidth usage, latency, and integration levels. Understanding these differences and knowing which API protocol to use enables developers to build high-quality APIs and add the right features and functionalities to software applications. It also enables organizations to devise a robust API security strategy.

The 10 Most Popular API Protocols

Here are the 10 most popular protocols and how they differ in terms of their format, structure, and use cases:

The Need for Secure API Protocols

Based on the requirements, APIs can be used in various forms and styles. The chosen style decides how API security is applied and implemented. Also, each protocol requires specialized security considerations to address potential vulnerabilities and defend against tailored exploitation techniques. This is because the different protocols have distinct architectural and operational nuances and introduce their own unique security threats and attack vectors.

For example, GraphQL, due to its flexible querying capability, is prone to resource exhaustion attacks if queries aren’t properly validated and rate-limited. REST is vulnerable to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, injection attacks, and cross-site scripting (XSS) since its APIs often employ authentication and session management mechanisms and feature many different levels of access. Similarly, SOAP APIs are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle (MitM) and DoS attacks, XML injection (XXE), and SQL injections if proper authentication mechanisms and authorization controls are not applied.

Effective Strategies to Boost API Security

API security is a non-negotiable aspect of API development and data-centric projects. It is also an ongoing process. And strong, reliable API security starts with API security testing. Continuous security testing and API discovery using approaches like penetration testing and attack surface management (ASM) can provide identification of API weaknesses and potential security threats, plus recommendations to implement offensive security measures against modern and common vulnerabilities affecting APIs.

Human-led pentesting across the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is particularly effective in identifying the vulnerabilities that are often missed during the earlier stages or not detected by automated scanning tools. Combining pentesting with ongoing security monitoring ensures the filtering of all incoming API traffic for known attack patterns and vulnerabilities, thus providing more robust protection.

During API development, it’s important to conduct code reviews to identify and fix vulnerabilities as early as possible in the SDLC. Automated testing methodologies like static application security testing (SAST) and Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS) enable teams to easily analyze the source code for security vulnerabilities like injection attacks, insecure coding practices, and data exposure, and implement appropriate remediation measures to prevent vulnerability exploitation by threat actors.

For more comprehensive testing, it’s advisable to combine SAST and PTaaS with several other API testing approaches like:

• Dynamic application security testing (DAST) to identify runtime vulnerabilities like injection attacks, XSS, and security misconfigurations
• Authentication and authorization testing to prevent unauthorized access to APIs
• Data validation and input validation testing to prevent data manipulation attacks
• Session management testing to identify vulnerabilities related to session handling and management
• API gateway security testing to ensure that API gateways are properly configured for security
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) verification to verify that proper data encryption is implemented
• Container security testing to prevent container-specific vulnerabilities

It’s also vital to deploy strong security controls including proper authentication detection logic, scrupulous input validation, web application firewall (WAF) configuration reviews, log analyses, and API gateways to secure APIs and protect the organization against common cyberattacks and emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

Effective API Security and a Stronger Security Posture with BreachLock

API security is a complex challenge that goes beyond using the right API protocol for specific use cases. To establish a robust defense, organizations must adopt a holistic approach to discovering, assessing, and continuously monitoring APIs.

BreachLock continuous penetration testing goes beyond traditional vulnerability scanning to simulate real-world attacks. We evaluate your API security holistically by identifying vulnerabilities that could be missed by basic vulnerability scans. BreachLock’s human-delivered PTaaS solution also includes code reviews to identify security risks that automated tools could overlook.

BreachLock ASM identifies all the APIs within your environment, including shadow APIs, and scans your environment to identify and prioritize API vulnerabilities like inadequate authentication mechanisms that could be used in an exploit. This provides a strategic risk-based starting point to guide further testing.

With BreachLock’s comprehensive platform and services, enterprises can fortify their API security, safeguard sensitive data, and significantly reduce the risk of API-targeted attacks.

Schedule your free discovery call with BreachLock today to learn more!

About BreachLock

BreachLock is a global leader in Continuous Attack Surface Discovery and Penetration Testing. Continuously discover, prioritize, and mitigate exposures with evidence-backed Attack Surface Management, Penetration Testing, and Red Teaming.

Elevate your defense strategy with an attacker’s view that goes beyond common vulnerabilities and exposures. Each risk we uncover is backed by validated evidence. We test your entire attack surface and help you mitigate your next cyber breach before it occurs.

Know your risk. Contact BreachLock today!