Managing the hidden risks of shadow APIs

Managing the hidden risks of shadow APIs

February 1, 2024 at 10:07PM

APIs are critical in the digital economy but can pose data security risks due to their proliferation. Shadow APIs and lack of visibility exacerbate these challenges. F5’s solution emphasizes inventory management, discovery, validation, and comprehensive visibility. Utilizing AI and ML, it offers intelligent risk mitigation and assists in unified management across various compute environments.

From the meeting notes, it is clear that the main focus was on the importance of managing and securing Application programming interfaces (APIs) to mitigate data security vulnerabilities in today’s digital economy. The discussion highlighted the challenges posed by API sprawl and the exploitation of APIs by bad actors targeting web apps. The F5 Distributed Cloud API Security solution was articulated as a key tool in providing deep insights with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to identify shadow APIs and eliminate vulnerabilities in real time. The solution emphasizes the need for proper API documentation and inventory, API discovery, API validation, and comprehensive visibility into the security of API endpoints. Additionally, the F5 Distributed Cloud Platform is designed to enable unified management of infrastructure and workloads across multiple compute environments for flexible deployment, secure app-to-app interconnection, and consistent policy enforcement across cloud, data center, and edge, as well as the application lifecycle. This approach is heralded as a shift in the common risk management approach, especially with the rise of shadow APIs, providing organizations with comprehensive cross-platform visibility and the power of AI and ML.

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