Why You Should Take Preventative Measures Now to Reduce Risk Through Unsecure APIs
High blood pressure is known as a “silent killer” because most people never felt like there was an issue before they suffered a cardiac event. APIs are similar in that most enterprises don’t realize that they have gaps in coverage until it’s too late. Cybersecurity professionals need to treat API security just like high blood pressure would be treated. Namely, the best way to prepare yourself is to familiarize yourself with your risk and take proactive choices to mitigate that risk. For hypertension that means getting a baseline set of vitals understanding your family history; perhaps switching to turkey and reducing the consumption of red meat. For your organization’s APIs, that means identifying APIs and then proactively scanning for vulnerabilities. When an API attack occurs most organizations are unprepared because: they didn’t know they needed to secure them, they attempted to secure their APIs but they treated them like Web Applications, or they simply lacked complete visibility to all their APIs. These issues emphasize the urgent need for taking a two-pronged approach to API Security Testing.
Unseen Threats: The Silent Predators
The most serious cybersecurity risks are increasingly coming via these “silent killers”. This makes sense since a higher percentage of web traffic is going through APIs as recently discussed in Jyoti Bansal article published by Forbes “APIs account for over half the internet traffic in many countries.”1 Hidden risks such as the misconfiguration of cloud services and shadow IT can leave the back door wide open for attackers.
Enter Edgescan: Making the Invisible, Visible
You simply can’t defend what you don’t know about. The “first step in API security is to discover and catalog all the APIs in your applications. This can be a complex task, as APIs are constantly added and updated.”2
The Edgescan Platform is a hybrid that combines automation, analytics, and human intelligence. Our newly released – External Attack Surface Management solution scans your entire digital footprint and global IT ecosystem including on-premises and cloud-based systems, eliminating any potential gaps in coverage. Edgescan EASM is a great tool to expose any “silent killers” waiting in the lurch. By constantly monitoring your digital estate, Edgescan’s EASM performs continuous asset profiling, discovers Shadow IT, and provides remediation strategies to mitigate the associated risks. EASM provides full visibility across your public cloud, ensuring that any misconfigurations are promptly detected and rectified.
Keeping Up with the Changing Landscape
Edgescan’s Full Stack Vulnerability Management (FSVM) solution ensures that vulnerabilities are verified, triaged, and remediated effectively. As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, so too does the protection provide by the Edgescan platform. The Edgescan platform delivers validated vulnerability data that is rated for severity using the Edgescan Validated Security Score (EVSS). In addition, discovered vulnerabilities have the following risk-based data to help you prioritize risks: EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System), CISAKEV (CISA Known Exploited Vulnerability catalogue), CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System).
Forbes also recommends that to ensure API security organizations need to “implement common-sense policies to minimize risk.”3 This means scanning your APIs and performing penetration testing on a regular cadence, with the ability to perform ad hoc testing as well. It is vital to ensure that your APIs “should never expose more data than what is necessary to service the user,”4 and the most trusted method to determine whether that API can be abused is still a penetration test.
In the terms of cybersecurity, these APIs’ potential as “silent killers” is just now starting to be realized. That’s why Edgescan is committed to shedding light on these threats and providing a comprehensive solution to protect your organization.
We are here to help illuminate and eliminate your cyber risk when it comes to securing APIs, or any part of your infrastructure.
Conclusion
As we navigate this ever-evolving digital landscape, it is crucial to stay informed and well-equipped against emerging threats. If you have any questions about how Edgescan can bolster your cybersecurity strategy, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
References 1, 2, 3, 4:
Jyoti Bansal, Your Biggest Cybersecurity Threat Is Something You’ve Never Heard Of, Forbes, March 2023