UltraAPI FAQs

API security refers to the practices, measures, and protocols implemented to protect APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) from unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats. APIs serve as the intermediary software components that enable different applications, systems, or services to communicate and interact with each other, exchanging data and functionalities.

API security aims to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of APIs and the data they handle, as well as to prevent unauthorized access, data leaks, or misuse of API resources. It encompasses various aspects, including authentication, authorization, encryption, input validation, logging, monitoring, and compliance with security standards and best practices.

API security and API protection are related concepts but address different aspects of securing APIs.  Both are essential components of a comprehensive API security strategy.

API Security focuses on governance - ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the API and its data:

• Compliance: Ensuring that the API adheres to relevant security standards and regulations.
• Authentication: Ensuring that only authorized users or systems can access the API.
• Authorization: Determining what actions or resources the authenticated users or systems are allowed to access.
• Data Integrity: Ensuring that the data exchanged between the client and the API remains intact and unaltered.
• Encryption: Protecting the data transmitted between the client and the API from being intercepted and read by unauthorized parties.
• Validation and Sanitization: Ensuring that the data sent to the API is valid and safe to process to prevent injection attacks.

API Protection focuses on protection - safeguarding the API from various forms of abuse, exploitation, and attacks:

• Rate Limiting: Preventing abuse of the API by limiting the number of requests a client can make over a given time period.
• Denial of Service (DoS) Protection: Implementing measures to mitigate or prevent DoS attacks targeting the API.
• IP Whitelisting/Blacklisting: Controlling access to the API based on the IP address of the client.
• Payload Inspection: Analyzing the content of API requests to detect and block malicious payloads.
• Bot Detection and Mitigation: Identifying and blocking automated bots that may be trying to exploit the API.
• API Monitoring and Logging: Monitoring API usage and logging relevant events for auditing and analysis purposes.
• Threat Intelligence Integration: Utilizing threat intelligence feeds to proactively identify and block known malicious actors or behaviors targeting the API.

An API platform, short for Application Programming Interface platform, is essentially a set of tools, protocols, and services that allow different software applications to communicate with each other. It serves as an intermediary layer between various software components, enabling them to exchange data and functionality in a standardized and efficient manner.

API security encompasses various measures to protect APIs from unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats. Here are some common types of API security:

• Authentication: Verifying the identity of clients accessing the API. This can include methods such as API keys, OAuth tokens, JWT (JSON Web Tokens), and client certificates.
• Authorization: Determining what actions or resources authenticated clients are allowed to access. Role-based access control (RBAC), OAuth scopes, and fine-grained access control mechanisms fall into this category.
• Data Encryption: Encrypting data transmitted between clients and the API to prevent eavesdropping and unauthorized access. This often involves using protocols like HTTPS/TLS to secure communications.
• Input Validation and Sanitization: Ensuring that data sent to the API is valid and safe to process, mitigating risks such as injection attacks (e.g., SQL injection, XSS). Input validation involves checking the format, length, and type of incoming data, while sanitization removes potentially dangerous characters or elements.
• Rate Limiting: Limiting the number of requests a client can make to the API within a specific time frame. Rate limiting helps prevent abuse, DoS attacks, and ensures fair usage of API resources.
• Logging and Monitoring: Recording and analyzing API activity for security auditing, compliance, and threat detection purposes. Monitoring API traffic can help identify anomalies, suspicious behavior, and potential security incidents.
• API Gateway Security: Implementing security features at the API gateway level, including traffic filtering, access control, threat detection, and protocol enforcement. API gateways serve as a centralized entry point for API traffic and can provide an additional layer of security.
• Threat Intelligence Integration: Leveraging threat intelligence feeds to proactively identify and block known malicious actors, IP addresses, or behaviors targeting the API. Threat intelligence helps enhance the API's security posture by staying updated on emerging threats and attack trends.
• Compliance and Standards Adherence: Ensuring that the API follows relevant security standards, best practices, and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS). Compliance measures may include data protection, privacy controls, and security assessments.
• Error Handling and Exception Management: Implementing robust error handling mechanisms to prevent information leakage and ensure secure handling of exceptions. Proper error handling can help prevent security vulnerabilities like information disclosure and enumeration attacks.

By incorporating these types of API security measures into their systems, organizations can enhance the security posture of their APIs.

Common API security risks include:

• Insufficient Authentication: Weak or ineffective authentication mechanisms can allow unauthorized users to access sensitive API endpoints or perform unauthorized actions.
• Broken Access Control: Improperly implemented access controls may enable unauthorized users to access restricted resources or perform privileged operations.
• Injection Attacks: Injection vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection or NoSQL injection, can occur if input from clients is not properly validated or sanitized, leading to potential data breaches or manipulation.
• Sensitive Data Exposure: APIs may inadvertently expose sensitive information, such as credentials, personally identifiable information (PII), or other confidential data, through improper data handling or inadequate encryption.
• Broken Authentication: Weaknesses in authentication mechanisms, such as session fixation, credential stuffing, or brute force attacks, can lead to unauthorized access to user accounts or API endpoints.
• Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR): APIs that expose internal object references or identifiers without proper authorization checks may be susceptible to IDOR vulnerabilities, allowing attackers to access unauthorized data.
• Security Misconfiguration: Poorly configured API servers, frameworks, or cloud services may introduce security vulnerabilities, such as default credentials, unnecessary services, or open access to sensitive resources.
• Inadequate Logging and Monitoring: Insufficient logging and monitoring capabilities can hinder the detection of security incidents, malicious activities, or abnormal behavior within the API ecosystem.
• Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks: APIs may be susceptible to DoS attacks, including volumetric attacks, resource exhaustion, or API rate limiting bypasses, resulting in service disruptions or downtime.
• Insecure Third-Party Integrations: Integrating with third-party APIs or services without proper security assessments or trust boundaries can introduce security risks, such as data leakage, supply chain attacks, or dependency vulnerabilities.
• Lack of Transport Layer Protection: APIs that transmit sensitive data over insecure channels or without proper encryption (e.g., HTTPS/TLS) are vulnerable to eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, or data interception.
• Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards: APIs that accept or process untrusted input to redirect clients to other URLs or resources may be susceptible to open redirects or forwards, leading to phishing attacks or malicious redirects.

UltraAPI is a unified API security platform that consists of 3 products:

• UltraAPI Discover (API Attack Surface Discovery)
• UltraAPI Comply (API Security Posture Management)
• UltraAPI Bot Manager (API Threat Detection & Response)

UltraAPI Discover is a SaaS-based attack surface discovery tool that gives you an outside-in view of your exposed resources – effectively showing you what the attacker may see. It uncovers API servers and some of the most common API endpoints they host.

UltraAPI Discover uses a predictive crawling technique on your public domain to discover exposed resources. In order to discover your API attack surface, all you need to provide is a top-level domain (e.g. exampledomain.com), and UltraAPI Discover will discover API endpoints under that domain

You do not need to install or deploy any software on your premises for UltraAPI Discover to work, nor do you need to make any network changes. You simply enter the top-level domain you wish to crawl with UltraAPI Discover and it will then discover the API servers and endpoints under that domain.

No. Your work email root domain is automatically configured as a crawl target.

UltraAPI Discover typically generates a few hundred API requests per API server when crawling a domain. The crawling is benign and is of similar impact to a Google Bot crawl impact.

UltraAPI Comply allows you to discover, monitor, and test an organization’s internal APIs; assess and remediate risks to eliminate coding errors that can lead to compliance/governance issues, data loss, and business disruption.

UltraAPI Comply identifies all API endpoints – documented, undocumented, third-party, and even shadow APIs to create a runtime API catalog. Discovered APIs are inventoried and assessed for risks related to access control, sensitive data leakage, and even compliance with the published API specification.

No, UltraAPI Comply deploys at the network level and requires no server- or client-side agents, JavaScript, or SDK integration.

Yes, UltraAPI Comply enables IT and development teams to test APIs, identifying and remediating vulnerabilities and coding errors, both in pre-production and at runtime.

API bot mitigation refers to the strategies and techniques used to detect, manage, and mitigate the impact of bot traffic on APIs. Bots can range from legitimate automated scripts performing authorized tasks to malicious bots attempting to exploit vulnerabilities or disrupt API operations.

API attack prevention involves implementing strategies and mechanisms to safeguard APIs from various types of malicious activities and security threats. These attacks can target the API itself, as well as the underlying systems and data it interacts with. Here are some common techniques:

• Authentication and Authorization: Implement robust authentication mechanisms such as OAuth, API keys, or JWT tokens to ensure that only authorized users and applications can access the API.
• Input Validation: Validate and sanitize all incoming data and parameters to prevent injection attacks such as SQL injection, XSS, and command injection. Input validation should be performed at both the API level and the application level to mitigate the risk of data manipulation and code execution vulnerabilities.
• Rate Limiting and Throttling: Enforce rate limits and throttling policies to prevent excessive API requests from overwhelming the system and causing performance degradation or denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Rate limiting helps to ensure fair usage of API resources and protect against brute force attacks and automated scraping.
• Encryption and Transport Security: Use strong encryption protocols (e.g., TLS/SSL) to encrypt data transmitted over the network and protect against eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, and data interception. Ensure that sensitive information such as authentication tokens and user credentials are never transmitted in plaintext.
• Monitoring and Logging: Implement comprehensive logging and monitoring of API traffic, errors, and security events to detect suspicious activity and unauthorized access attempts. Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and set up alerts for unusual patterns or anomalies indicative of a potential security breach.

API bot management refers to the practice of managing and controlling interactions with APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) by automated programs, commonly known as bots. These bots can range from simple scripts performing repetitive tasks to sophisticated AI-powered agents. API bot management is essential for maintaining the security, reliability, and performance of APIs in the face of increasingly sophisticated bot-based threats and ensuring a positive experience for legitimate users and applications interacting with the API.

UltraAPI Bot Manager protects an organization’s APIs from the full range of automated attacks, eliminating the adverse business impacts caused by malicious bots such as infrastructure cost overruns, site outages, customer loss, skewed sales analytics, and brand damage.

There are many flexible options to deploy UltraAPI Bot Manager:

• SaaS Deployment
• Active or Passive
• Integration with your API Infrastructure

UltraAPI Bot Manager delivers uses multi-dimensional machine learning techniques that identify malicious traffic based on behavior. The CQAI machine learning engine improves attack detection and evolves with sophisticated attacks, even as attackers re-tool to avoid detection.

UltraAPI Bot Manager offers a fraud prevention module that supports customizable, granular policies for fraud prevention use cases specific to your business and vertical.