Cybersecurity teams know that you can only protect assets—hardware, software, and data—that you know about, and that lack of a good asset inventory is a bad IT management practice that manifests itself as security incidents such as data breaches and ransomware attacks.
APIs, being the interface between software components, are no different. Improper API inventory management refers to the failure to track, manage, and secure all APIs within an organization’s infrastructure. This lack of oversight can lead to APIs that are redundant, outdated, or insecure. This can potentially leave those APIs exposed and with vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious actors.
What is Improper API Management?
Improper inventory management of APIs is item 9 on the OWASP API Top 10, an awareness document highlighting the most common weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and bad practices around building and managing APIs.
Effective API inventory management ensures the effective management—visibility, and control—of all APIs in use, enabling organizations to mitigate security risks and optimize performance. However, when organizations neglect API asset management, they are exposed to an array of risks, including security breaches, compliance issues, and operational inefficiencies.
How Improper API Inventory Management Happens
Improper API inventory management occurs when organizations lack a comprehensive and updated list of all their APIs that are available. This improper inventory management vulnerability leaves organizations open to threats, as they may not have adequate security measures or monitoring protocols in place for APIs that they do not know exist. Malicious actors can exploit this lack of visibility, using these undetected and unmanaged APIs to gain unauthorized access to data or disrupt services.
A proper API inventory involves the mapping of several components of an API:
- The endpoints inside of the API
- The schema for each endpoint
- The data format for each input field of each endpoint
- The schema in its entirety is published internally and with the API’s consumers
- The API has undergone a security review and is otherwise considered “managed”
Examples of Improper API Inventory Management
There are many ways that an organization can end up with an inaccurate API inventory. Developers may neglect to update API documentation and the API inventory with new endpoints and features because they must do the updates manually. Business units might procure API services from a third party without any security review. A security team that requires lengthy processes and assessments for deploying changes to APIs is bypassed by development teams when they are perceived as adding no value. An outdated API has not been decommissioned and is still deployed and answering API requests.
Some scenarios on how an API inventory can become inaccurate:
A company builds a set of APIs with a published schema in JSON. Developers add a new API endpoint that gets released into production without being added to the published schema. The new endpoint is lightly used and forgotten about over time and is eventually discovered by a malicious hacker who uses it to cause a data breach.
A developer builds an API with a toolkit. That toolkit allows the developer to build, publish, and troubleshoot an API very quickly. However, the developer fails to disable the troubleshooting or debugging features in the toolkit prior to deployment to production. Security auditors discover the troubleshooting features in an audit.
An operations team decommissions a set of APIs but neglects to decommission one of the servers. That server still answers requests even though it is no longer publicly available. A subsequent change in load-balancer configurations then re-exposes that server and the API that it hosts. That API is then scraped by a bot and used to enumerate user accounts and their email addresses. This data is used in a phishing attack against the API’s users.
API inventories decay over time and need to be refreshed with the “ground truth” to continue to be accurate and complete.
How Improper API Inventory Management Impacts Your Business
The business impacts of improper API inventory management can be severe. Failure to manage APIs properly can result in:
- Increased security risks: APIs that are not effectively managed can be exploited by hackers to steal sensitive data, disrupt services, or introduce malware.
- Higher operational costs: Unmonitored APIs require unnecessary maintenance, which can lead to redundancy and increased resource use.
- Compliance risks: Many industries have strict data protection and security regulations. Failure to manage APIs properly can result in regulatory violations and heavy fines.
- Poor user experience: Unreliable or outdated APIs can slow down application performance, affecting the overall user experience.
- Increased operational fragility: undiscovered APIs can cause outages and other service disruptions when application and infrastructure changes are made.
How to Prevent Improper API Inventory Management
To safeguard against improper API inventory management vulnerabilities, organizations should focus on proactively maintaining a comprehensive API catalog that includes details about each API’s components, purpose, usage, and security requirements.
Because API inventories become inaccurate over time, organizations should implement API inventory processes that include the following controls:
- Centralized API repository: Use a centralized system for API asset management to maintain visibility over all APIs and ensure proper lifecycle management.
- Regular API audits: Conduct regular checks to ensure all APIs are accounted for and are up to date with security patches.
- Lifecycle management: Manage the entire lifecycle of APIs from creation to decommissioning, ensuring unused APIs are retired to prevent vulnerabilities.
- Automated monitoring tools: Implement API management tools that automatically detect unused or outdated APIs and alert security teams to act.
Read the blog post How to Mitigate API Vulnerabilities for best practices.
How Vercara Can Help
Vercara’s API protection suite, UltraAPI, is a purpose-built toolkit developed to identify, assess, and protect APIs with three core components:
UltraAPI Discover is a monitoring and scanning tool that offers visibility from an attacker’s perspective into APIs, continuous monitoring, and an up-to-date inventory of service gateways and cloud deployments, enabling you to secure your API footprint.
UltraAAPI Comply is a solution that monitors traffic to your APIs to detect undocumented endpoints, schemas, and data types to identify where your APIs have inadequate controls.
UltraBot Manager monitors traffic to your APIs in real-time and uses Machine Learning to identify attacks and automated programs and block them before they can cause a security incident.
APIs are critical components of modern applications, and their improper management can lead to significant security risks. The impact of improper inventory management is far-reaching, from increased security vulnerabilities to higher operational costs and compliance risks. To protect your organization, it is crucial to implement strong API asset management practices, regularly audit APIs, and use automated tools to detect and prevent vulnerabilities.
Contact us for more information on how addressing these vulnerabilities with a proactive strategy can safeguard your APIs and ensure your business’s continued success.
