06-Sep-2022 08:37 - edited 24-Jul-2023 08:51
An application programming interface (API) is a combination of protocols, functions, etc. which we can utilize to get details about resources, services and features. APIs are fast, lightweight and reliable but they expose sensitive data and so they have become the targets of hackers.
The simplicity of APIs has given hackers a chance to infiltrate them in plethora of ways to steal personal and sensitive details. Increase in demand of API security caused a need for a project to keep track of latest API vulnerabilities and security procedures called OWASP API Security Top 10.
As per the above project below are the top ten issues and their overview in API security as of 2019.
Web Application and API protection (WAAP) is a SAAS offering provided by F5 Distributed Cloud Services to protect applications and published APIs using Web Application Firewall (WAF), bot protection, API security, and DDoS mitigation. Once WAAP policy is applied on the load balancer, these service engines protect web applications and API endpoints with the latest automatic detection of WAF, Bot and DOS attack signatures.
One of the key sections of Distributed Cloud WAAP is API security which focuses primarily on securing the API’s using different configurations like OpenAPI ingestion, automatic API discovery, service policies, rate limiting, Allow/Denied URLs, etc.
Below diagram shows how Distributed Cloud WAAP protects APIs:
Note: