Page 101 - Cyber Defense eMagazine December 2022 Edition

Secure APIs to Drive Digital Business

By Mourad Jaakou, General Manager Amplify at Axway

Back in 2010, API Evangelist blogger Kin Lane posited that application programming interfaces (APIs)
are driving the Internet and our economy. A decade later, we are seeing the prescience of that statement
everywhere. From users to bots and applications, to a myriad of cloud services, everyone is leveraging
APIs to implement a wide and growing range of functionality to serve our modern digital infrastructure.

But the rise of APIs and the benefits they provide also brings with it the risk of data exposure, which can
jeopardize business continuity and user trust. Consider how an issue involving the ODdata API on the
Microsoft Power Apps portal compromised sensitive data from large U.S. companies and various
government agencies in summer of 2021. In addition, the IBM Security X-Force Cloud Threat Landscape
2021 report suggests that APIs would be involved in two-thirds of the cybersecurity incidents examined.

Meanwhile, in the era of digital transformation and API development, Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) has
emerged as a critical approach to maintaining the security of enterprise infrastructure. The Cybersecurity
Executive Order signed by President Biden last year required this type of "Zero Trust" architecture within
some jurisdictions. As a result of the executive order, many companies have also included the
implementation of this type of architecture in their roadmap. In this context, the combination of API-based
technologies and ZTA could be decisive in the fight against relentless cyberattacks.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – December 2022 Edition 101
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