Why is API security essential in cloud-native environments?
According to recent research, 84% of survey participants reported at least one API security issue in 2024. That's the third year in a row that the number has climbed, which highlights just how common API attacks have become.
A big part of the problem? The wild pace of web development. In the rush to push new features online, application security is deprioritized—or even ignored altogether. In particular, AppSec challenges are intensified by microservices architectures, where it's tough to monitor all nodes at once.
Security is even more difficult in cloud-native environments because each API endpoint can be leveraged as an entry point and, depending on architecture and controls, a pivot to other resources. Yet another pressing issue? Coverage gaps. Splitting security responsibilities between the cloud provider and the customer in the shared responsibility model means API security might fall into a gray area, making it unclear who should take care of it.
All in all, focusing on API endpoints is a smart move for attackers, so you need ironclad strategies to protect your systems. Remember: API breaches aren't just a technical issue you can backburner. They can lead to serious reputational damage, and with the threat of sensitive data exposure, they can also come with high regulatory fines due to GDPR or CCPA violations.
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What you can catch with an API security checklist
An API checklist serves as a framework to help your security team systematically detect and tackle threats and vulnerabilities throughout the API lifecycle. Its end goal? To strengthen your overall security posture by standardizing API security efforts.
Stress levels are high during incidents, and security professionals need to be able to quickly understand and remediate issues. That’s why an API security checklist is a logically organized list of clear, concise, and actionable instructions that’s specifically designed to minimize human errors.
The best API security checklists combine the tips, best practices, and in-depth knowledge about threats from trusted sources like:
Wiz’s API security cheat sheet
Keep in mind that API security checklists are dynamic, and the items they consist of keep changing. Just like attack techniques evolve (faster than ever, thanks to AI!), your checklist should be regularly reviewed and updated, especially if it proves ineffective during simulations or real-world incidents.
Now that we’ve seen what’s at risk and the foundational aspects of an API security checklist, let’s get right into a checklist that addresses crucial security challenges your teams need to face.
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.
API security checklist
The checklist below is organized into ten categories that cover the most common aspects of API security:
1. Design-phase security controls
Embrace API-first design: When creating priorities for API development, treat security as a core design aspect from the very beginning. This helps to catch issues promptly in the development lifecycle, before they can escalate.
Use threat modeling: Apply threat modeling strategies like STRIDE, DREAD, and PASTA to consider and prioritize API security risks early.
Define security requirements as user stories: Verify each API endpoint’s security by translating security needs into product backlog items (PBIs) with clear acceptance criteria.
Specify clear API contracts: Define formal API contracts with documented security schemas written in OpenAPI (or similar specs) to enable automated security validation.
Integrate security linters: Configure security linters in the IDE to proactively uncover source code security issues early in the API development cycle.
2. Authentication and authorization mechanisms
Implement an authorization framework: An authorization framework like OAuth 2.0 can uphold proper access flows and safeguard token handling.
Handle JWT tokens securely: Prefer asymmetric algorithms (RS256 or PS256), use short TTLs, rotate keys via JWKS, and enforce claim validation (iss, aud, exp). Avoid ‘alg=none’ and verify ‘kid’ usage.
Set up RBAC: Apply role-based access control with resource-level permissions to restrict access per endpoint and user role, in accordance with the principle of least privilege.
Enforce API key rotation: To mitigate key compromise attacks, regularly rotate API keys and automate their expiration through a centralized management system.
Configure mutual TLS: Set up mTLS for service-to-service authentication to prevent spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks between microservices.
Log all authentication attempts and authorization events: Log authentication and authorization events with data minimization: mask tokens/PII, pseudonymize identifiers, set retention limits, and ensure lawful basis and access controls to align with GDPR/CCPA.
3. Input validation and output encoding
Validate body parsing: Enforce expected content types to prevent insecure deserialization due to malformed bodies.
Apply strict schema validation: Check the integrity and structure of input data by validating it with JSON Schema or similar standards.
Sanitize all user-generated content: Remove unsafe characters and scripts before storing or processing user-generated data to fend off code injection attacks..
Implement business logic validation: Verify API input data adheres to business rules, checking for logical validity (e.g., payment amounts can’t be negative).
Use parameterized queries: Employ parameterized queries with sanitized inputs to protect against SQL injection.
Apply context-aware output encoding: Encode output based on context to prevent XSS, especially for APIs consumed by frontend applications.
4. Rate limiting and throttling
Set smart rate limits: Apply per-endpoint rate limits for granularity, with fallback general limits to mitigate DDoS and brute force attacks.
Detect and block web scraping behavior: Analyze incoming traffic to automatically identify and stop web scraping or crawling attempts.
Implement token bucket algorithms: Use token bucket mechanisms to enforce fair rate limiting across various API consumers, making sure user-specific thresholds aren’t exceeded (which is a signal of misuse).
Manage distributed rate limiting: Centralize rate limit data in an in-memory database like Redis to guarantee consistent limits across multiple nodes.
Handle rate limiter headers carefully: Use RateLimit-* standard headers to help well-behaved clients back off, but avoid exposing implementation details (e.g., per-customer quotas or internal identifiers).
5. Secrets management
Implement secrets detection: Integrate automated tools like detect-secrets to find unsecured secrets in source code or configuration files.
Integrate secrets scanning in versioning workflows: Use open-source API security tools like git-secrets to block accidental commits of sensitive data, preventing leaks.
Store secrets securely: Safeguard API keys, credentials, and other secrets from exposure by storing them in dedicated solutions like AWS Secrets Manager.
Encrypt secrets at rest and in transit: Protect secrets from unauthorized access by encrypting them both at rest and in transit.
Rotate secrets: Lower your exposure to credential access by periodically updating the credentials or API keys employed for communication between services.
Give time-bound access to secrets: Log all access attempts for improved accountability, and grant only temporary access to secrets.
6. API documentation and inventory
Maintain a comprehensive API inventory: Discover and address unsecured shadow endpoints by integrating automated API discovery tools (like Wiz) that keep track of all available endpoints.
Prevent API sprawl: Refer to your current API catalog before adding new APIs to avoid creating duplicate endpoints with inconsistent or conflicting security logic.
Generate interactive API documentation: Use OpenAPI specifications (or similar specs) to clearly document API functionality and highlight security requirements.
Create data flow diagrams: Visualize sensitive data movement across API endpoints and microservices to identify potential blind spots.
Document API deprecation policies: Define security support timelines and lifecycle procedures to ensure safe API versioning and timely retirement.
7. CI/CD pipeline security
Scan dependencies: Integrate software composition analysis (SCA) solutions to discover vulnerable dependencies before production releases.
Integrate SAST tools: Configure static application security testing (SAST) tools in the CI/CD pipeline to analyze source code and spot security flaws before deployment.
Secure infrastructure as code: Scan IaC configurations (e.g., API gateways and load balancers) to verify safe default settings and prevent misconfigurations.
Define deployment gates: Set up conditions to block deployments when critical security issues are found, fostering a culture of safe releases.
Use ephemeral environments for testing: Spin up isolated environments for security testing to guard against leaks–but remember to maintain test parity with production.
8. Runtime protection
Configure WAF policies: Enable web application firewall (WAF) features to recognize and neutralize common API attack patterns in real time.
Enable IP reputation filtering: For human-facing flows, use challenges (e.g., CAPTCHA). For machine-to-machine APIs, prefer HMAC request signing, mTLS, and behavioral risk scoring over CAPTCHA.
Configure automated attack mitigation: Set up automated responses to swiftly counteract common attacks like credential stuffing and account harvesting.
Run dynamic security testing: Use dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools to automatically test API behavior at runtime and catch issues missed by static analysis.
Schedule regular penetration testing: Conduct periodic penetration tests to uncover runtime vulnerabilities and verify the effectiveness of your API security checklist.
9. Monitoring and logging
Centralize API observability: Collect all API logs in a unified system to enhance monitoring and standardization.
Use correlation IDs: Adopt correlation IDs in logs across microservices to trace API requests end to end, using them to group log messages for easier investigation.
Integrate logs with SIEM tools: Connect API logs to security information and event management (SIEM) systems for in-depth threat detection.
Configure security alerts: Set alerts for suspicious patterns (e.g., mass 401/403 HTTP errors or unusual data transfers among services) to reveal attacks before they escalate.
Set up behavioral analysis: Observe and inspect API usage to pinpoint atypical behavior that could indicate a security breach.
10. Incident response planning
Develop API-specific incident playbooks: Detailed response protocols empower teams to swiftly address the most frequent types of attacks.
Define roles and responsibilities: Designate ownership for each security checklist item to clear up any confusion about who needs to do what.
Maintain emergency “break glass” procedures: Prepare plans for quick API shutdowns during crises to limit damage and exposure.
Automate forensic data collection: To support thorough post-incident investigations, set up systems that autonomously capture and preserve data.
Conduct tabletop exercises: Regularly simulate real-world API breach scenarios to test team readiness and response efficacy.
API Security: Best Practices for Safer Cloud Security
11 essential API security best practices that every organization should start with
Read more
Improve your API security with Wiz
As we’ve seen, APIs are the main entry points to cloud-native applications, and the best way to start on your security journey is by putting a clear API security checklist in place. Treat your checklist as a living document to make sure it evolves as fast as risks do.
After you’ve nailed down your checklist, the next step is to partner with a platform that takes the guesswork out of API security. (To truly secure your APIs, you need a holistic approach that prioritizes total visibility, context, and continuous coverage, so manual processes just don’t cut it!) Enter Wiz.
Wiz is a unified cloud security platform that secures applications from code to cloud and through runtime with graph-based, risk-prioritized remediation.
Here are just a few ways that Wiz keeps your APIs safe:
Automatic API discovery: The Wiz Runtime Sensor pinpoints all your API endpoints in runtime with a lightweight eBPF-based sensor and minimal overhead.
Attack path identification: The Wiz Dynamic Scanner checks publicly exposed endpoints for security issues and misconfigurations, helping you uncover potential attack paths. This coverage includes REST and GraphQL, with support for additional styles such as SOAP and gRPC where applicable.
Full context about which risks really matter: The Wiz Security Graph gives you a complete, at-a-glance view of toxic combinations that could cause a breach.
Code-to-cloud ownership mapping: Wiz correlates APIs to source repos, pipelines, and service owners so issues get routed to the right team fast.
The bottom line? Wiz gives you full API visibility, code-to-cloud context, and attack-path prioritization so you fix what matters first. See it in action—schedule a demo.
Secure your APIs with Wiz
Learn how Wiz Code scans IaC, containers, and pipelines to stop misconfigurations and vulnerabilities before they hit your cloud.
