With the rise of the API economy, APIs play an essential role in business success, but they also introduce new risks. Gartner predicted that by 2022, API abuse would become the most frequent attack vector behind data breaches for enterprise web applications.
This checklist covers 12 best practices to help you reduce that risk and secure your APIs:
- API gateway in place — centralize security and traffic controls instead of securing endpoints one by one.
- Central OAuth server — issue all tokens from one dedicated server, not from individual APIs or gateways.
- JSON Web Tokens — use JWTs internally, but switch to opaque tokens for external clients.
- Scopes for coarse-grained access control — limit what a token can do to reduce the impact of stolen credentials.
- Claims for fine-grained access control — enforce detailed access rules at the API level.
- Zero Trust — use HTTPS everywhere and always verify JWTs, even after the gateway.
- Libraries with JWT validation — standardize on proven libraries instead of custom validation code.
- JSON Web Key Sets — fetch signing keys from a JWKS endpoint to enable easy key rotation.
- Different authentication methods — don't mix authentication strengths for the same resource.
- Continuous checks for abuse — monitor usage to catch suspicious behavior early.
- Overall protection — secure internal APIs too, not just public-facing ones.
- Ongoing auditing — build in continuous, independent review rather than a one-time check.
Download the whitepaper for the full detail behind each recommendation.
