Vulnerabilities in your APIs are a significant data security issue — in 2022, one single API loophole was responsible for the Twitter data breach that affected 5.4 million users.
Unsecure APIs are a potential gateway that cyber criminals can exploit to access a company’s personally identifiable information. In a new report published by Corsha Inc., 53% of 400 security and engineering professionals had experienced a data security breach from compromised API tokens. 86% of those surveyed reported spending up to 15 hours per week managing API secrets, highlighting that many organisations are struggling with API management.
As APIs and the hybrid cloud working environment continue to rise in popularity, it’s clear that businesses need a scalable approach to API management that minimises vulnerabilities and protects their data security.
Data Security In The API Explosion
APIs are predominantly used to facilitate data transfer between your system and its users. With the meteoric rise of automated pipelines, microservices and cloud working, more APIs are required for daily business than ever before. 51% of developers now report that over half of their time is spent developing APIs, increasing from 40% in 2020.
Each API has a secret key that must be secured, as some cybercriminals can gain access to your sensitive information and compromise your data security via these vulnerabilities.
As APIs become more popular, so too does API exploitation, indicating that more and more development capacity may need to be spent on securing these API vulnerabilities.
API Secrets Management For Stronger Data Security
Effective API secrets management can help to minimise your data security risk by automating the creation, management and regular rotation of your secret API credentials — including keys, certificates, passwords and tokens. This means that companies don’t have to manually circulate sensitive API information that cybercriminals can then exploit.
With an effective API secrets management strategy in place, businesses can secure their sensitive information across their IT infrastructure by ensuring that only authorised identities can access sensitive business information.
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