An API catalog is a centralized inventory or registry of all the APIs used within an organization. It provides visibility into available APIs, their metadata, ownership, usage, and documentation – making it easier to discover, govern, and secure APIs across environments.
Behind the scenes, APIs power our digital reality by connecting microservices, driving mobile experiences, and keeping cloud-native applications humming. But their rapid adoption also brings real risks. In 2024, 84% of security professionals faced an API security incident, signaling that APIs are now a favorite target for attackers. The financial fallout is equally sobering, with the average cost of an API security incident now exceeding $580,000 in Asia-Pacific alone.
So, what’s the fix? No, not more dashboards; not more policies. The answer starts with an API catalog. It's the essential first step because you can't protect what you can't see. More than a list, an API catalog acts as a living map of all your API endpoints, capturing essential details and shining a light on risks that would otherwise remain hidden. Most importantly, it enables code-to-cloud visibility by connecting the abstract API definition to its live runtime environment, laying the groundwork for any serious API security effort.
Advanced API Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
Download the Wiz API Security Best Practices Cheat Sheet and fortify your API infrastructure with proven, advanced techniques tailored for secure, high-performance API management.
Why API catalogs are key in cloud-native environments
Cloud-native environments never sit still. Microservices and serverless functions keep new APIs popping up across distributed systems, while CI/CD pipelines push changes into production with barely a pause. Developers update code faster than they can update specs, and the real API landscape drifts away from what’s recorded:
Shadow APIs slip into existence and proliferate when developers deploy endpoints through CI/CD pipelines without security review, creating unauthenticated routes that expose internal services.
Zombie APIs hang around after they’ve outlived their purpose, still accessible and often forgotten.
Both types of APIs thrive in the gaps between intention and reality, quietly expanding the attack surface. Teams can’t see which ones rely on weak authentication or which ones quietly shuttle sensitive data outside approved channels. Ownership blurs, and when an incident hits, no one knows who’s responsible for what. This lack of visibility makes it impossible to assess and prioritize API risks accurately, and before long, critical vulnerabilities are exposed.
An API catalog restores clarity. It brings every endpoint, documented or not, into view. This foundation lets teams enforce real API security best practices, spot risks before they escalate, and assign clear accountability.
The elements of an effective API catalog
In a well-made API catalog, every entry carries context that helps teams see how data moves, where risk hides, and who should act when something goes wrong. The following fields give that map its depth and accuracy:
Endpoint URL or route: Store each full path, including variable segments and query strings, in your API catalog. Exact paths reveal overlaps and unexpected patterns, which in turn expose API vulnerabilities before attackers find them.
HTTP method: Listing whether an endpoint accepts GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, or other verbs clarifies intent and supports API security testing that checks requests and responses against expected behavior.
Protocol: In the catalog, common protocols like REST, GraphQL, gRPC, or SOAP should appear alongside the endpoint. This allows teams to pair the right API security tools with the specific interface and also helps identify older or less secure protocols that may require extra scrutiny.
Authentication scheme: An optimal catalog should explicitly flag the authentication mechanism for each endpoint, such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), mutual TLS, API keys, certificates, or indicating public (unauthenticated) access. This immediate visibility helps security teams quickly identify endpoints lacking strong authentication or those that deviate from security best practices.
Exposure level: Recording whether an endpoint is public or internal and noting the exact network segment that hosts it is key for accurately mapping your API attack surface. This clarity helps pinpoint potential entry points for attackers.
Hosting resource or service: Each endpoint needs to link to its runtime, whether that’s a container, a serverless function, a virtual machine, or a managed cloud gateway. Clear links help speed up patching, scaling, and forensic analysis after an event.
Sensitive data classification: Include flags for personal, payment, health, financial, or intellectual property data for every route. These labels make compliance audits smoother and help security teams prioritize high-impact issues.
Owner or team: Contact names and channels should also add to the context for each endpoint, ending the guesswork during an outage or breach and anchoring accountability throughout the lifecycle.
API version and status: Active, deprecated, or sunset plans should appear with version numbers so zombie services don’t linger unnoticed and breaking changes never surprise customers.
When all of these attributes come together as a single source of truth, visibility transforms into action: Engineers can iterate with confidence, auditors can trace data paths in minutes, and security teams can cut risk before it blossoms.
How to build and maintain an API catalog
Creating and sustaining a reliable API catalog unfolds in three overlapping stages, each one building on the strengths of the previous approach—and filling in gaps.
Manual inventory
In the earliest phase, teams tend to lean on human effort. Developers export gateway configurations, sift through internal wikis, and respond to questionnaires that populate a first spreadsheet. This process delivers a starting snapshot yet misses endpoints that were spun up quickly, never documented, or are already retired from memory. And because releases ship continually, a manual list is out-of-date in weeks and leaves security staff blind to live but unseen APIs.
Specification-based collection
The next layer introduces automation. CI/CD pipelines parse OpenAPI or Swagger files and push their paths, verbs, and schemas straight into the catalog. Here, integration at commit time keeps documented interfaces aligned with source control, and contract testing gets easier because every route carries its schema.
The catch? Scope. Anything that lacks a spec or drifts from it, including last-minute debug endpoints, remains invisible. That means shadow and zombie APIs persist even in highly disciplined shops.
Automated discovery
Comprehensive coverage arrives when runtime engines watch live traffic and record every call in real time. Deep packet inspection uncovers internal as well as internet-facing services, captures full request patterns, and immediately highlights authentication gaps. Modern discovery platforms can enrich every finding with cloud metadata, including but not limited to workload names, IP addresses, security groups, and hosting service details, allowing the catalog to refresh itself whenever autoscaling events or serverless jobs appear. Better yet, you can completely get rid of all the manual upkeep and maintain continuous visibility.
Layering these three approaches yields the best outcome. Manual efforts confirm ownership, specification parsing enforces design discipline, and automated discovery guarantees that no active endpoint slips through the cracks. The result is a catalog that stays trustworthy even as environments shift by the hour.
Advanced API Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
Download the Wiz API Security Best Practices Cheat Sheet and fortify your API infrastructure with proven, advanced techniques tailored for secure, high-performance API management.
Use cases for API catalogs
A well-maintained API catalog becomes a common reference point that sharpens decision-making for every team involved with modern applications. Here’s what it brings to the table:
Security: Complete endpoint visibility reveals authentication gaps, flags routes handling sensitive data, and maps the full attack surface across distributed environments.
Governance: Architects verify that new services follow agreed-upon design conventions and that every version has clear sunset dates. This consistency curbs API sprawl and prevents outdated code from lingering in production.
Compliance: Auditors can quickly list endpoints that handle regulated data, view their authentication settings, and export evidence showing that controls remain in place.
DevOps and platform teams: Dependency maps clarify how services talk to one another, so operators can right-size infrastructure and avoid blind spots during deployments. Ownership fields place a name beside every endpoint, speeding up incident hand-offs and daily maintenance.
Incident response: When alerts fire, responders immediately identify affected APIs, locate hosting workloads, and contact responsible teams without delay.
How Wiz helps you build a complete, context-aware API catalog
Visibility means little without context. That’s why Wiz approaches the problem from the cloud outward:
Agentless scanners connect to every major provider and surface managed and unmanaged APIs that other tools miss.
Deep inspection of network flows uncovers even quiet shadow endpoints, while the platform enriches each entry with workload identity, security group configuration, and runtime location.
But discovery is only the first step. Here's how Wiz turns raw endpoint detection into actionable intelligence:
Risk profiling happens instantly. Each route gets scored for auth strength, exposure level, and data sensitivity through Wiz's proprietary risk engine.
Toxic combinations surface fast. Public access paired with weak auth on sensitive data? That combo gets flagged and ranked by likelihood to become an incident.
Context runs deep. The Wiz Service Catalog connects every endpoint to its hosting workload, network segment, and owning dev team.
The picture stays fresh. Continuous discovery tracks autoscaling events and new deployments in real time, so your view never goes stale.
Static docs become dynamic defense. With Wiz, documentation evolves into defense — enabling teams to proactively mitigate the most critical risks based on real-time cloud context.
Ready to transform your API security with complete visibility and actionable insights? Request a personalized demo of Wiz today and discover how an always-on API catalog can help your team achieve code-to-cloud visibility and risk-prioritized remediation.
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