OWASP API Security: Top Risks, Protection & Best Practices

APIs now connect cloud applications, SaaS platforms, mobile apps, microservices, internal business systems and third-party services. That connectivity makes modern digital ecosystems possible, but it also expands the number of paths through which users, applications and machine identities can reach sensitive data and business functionality.

The OWASP API Security Project was created to help developers, architects, security teams and organizations understand security weaknesses that are particularly relevant to APIs. Its most recognized resource, the OWASP API Security Top 10, provides an awareness framework for important API-specific risks. The current published edition is the 2023 list.

Understanding those risks is only the first step. Modern API security also requires continuous visibility and operational protection.

A practical security journey is:

Understand → Discover → Assess → Protect → Detect → Govern

This guide explains the OWASP risks, why they matter, how organizations can identify and reduce them, and where SecurEnds’ current API Security capabilities fit into that broader model.

For foundational concepts, see the [Internal Link: Complete API Security Guide].

What Is OWASP API Security?

OWASP API Security is the API-focused security guidance, research and awareness work maintained through the OWASP API Security Project to help organizations understand and mitigate vulnerabilities and security risks specific to APIs.

OWASP explains that APIs have characteristics that justify an API-specific security-risk list alongside broader web-application security guidance. The API Security Project aims to educate developers, designers, architects, managers, security assessors and organizations involved in building or maintaining APIs.

The guidance is particularly useful because API risks are not limited to conventional injection or coding vulnerabilities.

APIs can expose:

• Application objects
• Sensitive properties
• Administrative functions
• Authentication services
• Resource-intensive operations
• Business workflows
• Internal infrastructure connections
• Third-party dependencies

As a result, OWASP API vulnerabilities frequently involve authorization, identity, business logic, resource abuse and visibility.

OWASP API Security vs OWASP Top 10

The two OWASP resources serve related but different purposes.

OWASP Top 10 focuses broadly on critical web-application security risks. The current released general OWASP Top 10 is the 2025 edition.

OWASP API Security Top 10 focuses specifically on modern API security risks. Its current published edition is the 2023 list.

OWASP explicitly states that its API-specific work is not intended to replace other Top 10 lists. Instead, it complements broader application-security guidance by highlighting risks particularly relevant to APIs.

What Is the OWASP API Security Top 10?

The OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 contains the following risk categories.

OWASP API Risk	Primary Concern
API1: Broken Object Level Authorization	Object access
API2: Broken Authentication	Identity verification
API3: Broken Object Property Level Authorization	Property and data access
API4: Unrestricted Resource Consumption	Resource abuse
API5: Broken Function Level Authorization	Privileged functionality
API6: Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows	Business-logic abuse
API7: Server-Side Request Forgery	Server-side requests
API8: Security Misconfiguration	Configuration weaknesses
API9: Improper Inventory Management	API visibility
API10: Unsafe Consumption of APIs	Third-party API risk

Another useful way to understand the list is through these control areas:

Identity → Authorization → Resources → Business Logic → Configuration → Inventory → Third Parties

This framing makes it clear that API protection cannot depend on one security tool.

Why the OWASP API Security Top 10 Matters

APIs expose application capabilities directly through structured requests. That creates security conditions that differ from a user interacting only through a controlled graphical interface.

An attacker can modify object identifiers, construct requests manually, automate workflows, test large numbers of endpoints or use compromised credentials without following the user experience developers originally designed.

The OWASP API Security Project specifically highlights authorization, authentication, resource consumption, sensitive business-flow abuse, inventory management and unsafe third-party consumption among its current priority risks.

Modern API environments also involve extensive machine-to-machine communication. Applications, workloads and service accounts may call APIs continuously, while cloud and microservice architectures can create new endpoints quickly.

Other challenges include:

• Sensitive information exposed directly through API responses
• Stolen credentials that still appear technically valid
• Legacy API versions remaining online
• Third-party integrations expanding trust boundaries
• Automated abuse that does not require a traditional vulnerability
• APIs operating outside normal documentation or management processes

Knowing the OWASP categories helps teams understand where to look.

But awareness alone does not reveal which APIs in the environment actually contain those risks.

Why Identifying OWASP API Risks Is Not Enough

Organizations can understand the OWASP API Security Top 10 perfectly and still operate an insecure API environment.

Operational security requires answering questions such as:

• What APIs exist?
• Which are externally exposed?
• Which are undocumented?
• Which versions remain active?
• Which APIs process sensitive data?
• Which identities are accessing them?
• Are authentication controls behaving correctly?
• Are authorization boundaries enforced?
• Are APIs being abused?
• Are bots or automation behaving unusually?
• Which APIs represent the highest current risk?

This creates a broader lifecycle:

Discover → Assess → Protect → Detect → Govern

SecurEnds’ current API Security portfolio follows a similar multi-capability model, listing API Inventory & Discovery, Threat Detection, Schema & Specification Validation, Authentication & Authorization Vulnerabilities, and API-to-API Adaptive MFA.

OWASP explains what types of risks matter.

A modern API-security operating model also needs to determine where those risks exist and what to do about them continuously.

OWASP API1:2023 — Broken Object Level Authorization

What Is Broken Object Level Authorization?

Broken Object Level Authorization, or BOLA, occurs when an API receives an object identifier but does not adequately verify whether the requesting identity is permitted to access that specific object.

OWASP identifies API1:2023 as Broken Object Level Authorization and emphasizes object-level authorization checks wherever an API accesses a data source using an identifier supplied by the user.

How BOLA Creates API Security Risk

Common identifiers include:

• User IDs
• Account IDs
• Order IDs
• Document IDs
• Invoice IDs
• Record identifiers

A user might legitimately request:

/orders/1458

If changing 1458 to another customer’s order identifier returns that customer’s information, authentication may have succeeded while object-level authorization failed.

The risk is especially serious because attackers can automate identifier manipulation across many requests.

How Organizations Can Reduce BOLA Risk

Controls should include:

• Server-side object authorization
• Access validation on every relevant request
• Least privilege
• Strong identity context
• Authorization testing across different users
• Deny-by-default principles
• Monitoring for suspicious cross-object access

Detecting and Monitoring Authorization Risks

Runtime monitoring can help identify patterns such as rapid requests across sequential object IDs, repeated authorization failures or an identity suddenly accessing unusually broad groups of records.

Detection does not replace object-level authorization, but it can expose exploitation attempts or compromised identities.

OWASP API2:2023 — Broken Authentication

Broken Authentication occurs when weaknesses in identity-verification mechanisms allow attackers to compromise authentication or assume another identity.

OWASP notes that authentication implementations may allow attackers to compromise tokens or exploit weaknesses to assume other users’ identities.

Common API Authentication Weaknesses

Risks can include:

• Weak credentials
• Inadequate token validation
• Long-lived credentials
• Credential stuffing
• Missing rate controls
• Poor session handling
• Exposed credentials
• Insecure machine authentication

API Authentication Security Best Practices

Organizations should consider:

• Strong authentication
• Correct token validation
• Credential rotation
• Secure secret storage
• Rate limiting
• MFA where risk warrants it
• Secure machine-to-machine authentication
• Monitoring for abnormal authentication activity

OWASP specifically notes that API keys should not be used as a substitute for user authentication.

Continuous API Authentication Protection

An API gateway may correctly authenticate a token, but that does not prove the credential has not been stolen.

Continuous monitoring should therefore look for abnormal token use, unexpected sources, unusual API activity and changes in machine-identity behavior.

For deeper coverage, see [Internal Link: API Authentication and Authorization].

OWASP API3:2023 — Broken Object Property Level Authorization

An identity may legitimately access an API object without being authorized to read or change every property within it.

OWASP’s API3:2023 combines concerns previously associated with excessive data exposure and mass assignment around the common root cause of improper property-level authorization.

How Property-Level Authorization Failures Occur

Sensitive properties might include:

• Administrative fields
• Internal risk scores
• Private customer information
• User-role settings
• Restricted account attributes
• Security metadata

An API may return an entire backend object even though the requesting application needs only two or three properties.

How to Reduce Property-Level Authorization Risks

Organizations should:

• Explicitly define readable properties
• Explicitly define writable properties
• Apply property-level authorization
• Minimize returned data
• Validate input
• Filter API responses
• Test multiple user roles

Protecting Sensitive API Data

API security controls should combine property-level authorization with monitoring for unusual attempts to retrieve restricted fields or unexpectedly large quantities of sensitive data.

OWASP API4:2023 — Unrestricted Resource Consumption

API requests consume infrastructure resources, including:

• CPU
• Memory
• Network bandwidth
• Storage
• Database resources
• Third-party services

OWASP identifies Unrestricted Resource Consumption as API4:2023.

Common Resource Consumption Risks

Examples include:

• Excessive API requests
• Large uploads
• Large response generation
• Expensive database queries
• Automated traffic
• Resource-intensive operations
• High-volume batch requests

Beyond availability, excessive requests can also create financial impact in usage-based cloud environments.

How to Prevent API Resource Abuse

Controls can include:

• Rate limiting
• Quotas
• Payload limits
• Query controls
• Request timeouts
• Resource thresholds
• Monitoring
• Abuse detection

API Runtime Protection Against Resource Abuse

Runtime protection is particularly valuable because resource abuse occurs while the API is operating.

SecurEnds’ current API Security offering describes automatic enforcement of rate limits alongside authentication and access controls.

For more detail, see [Internal Link: API Runtime Protection].

OWASP API5:2023 — Broken Function Level Authorization

APIs frequently expose different capabilities to different identities.

A regular user, manager, administrator and service account may all interact with the same system but require different functions.

Broken Function Level Authorization occurs when those function-level boundaries are not enforced correctly.

How Function-Level Authorization Fails

Attackers may discover privileged endpoints through:

• API documentation
• Endpoint naming
• Client applications
• Error responses
• Enumeration

An ordinary user may then attempt to call an administrative API directly.

Examples of Privileged API Functions

These can include:

• User-role management
• Account deletion
• Configuration changes
• Administrative reporting
• Access-policy management
• Privileged financial actions

How to Prevent Function-Level Authorization Risks

Controls should include:

• Deny-by-default policies
• Role- or attribute-based checks
• Least privilege
• Centralized authorization where practical
• Server-side enforcement
• Authorization testing
• Continuous monitoring
• Periodic privileged-access review

OWASP lists Broken Function Level Authorization as API5:2023.

OWASP API6:2023 — Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows

Some API security threats occur even when authentication and authorization work correctly.

API6:2023 focuses on legitimate business functions that attackers can automate or abuse in harmful ways.

Examples can include:

• Account creation
• Ticket purchasing
• Financial transactions
• Reservations
• Limited inventory acquisition
• Bulk operations
• Promotion abuse

Why Business Logic Abuse Is Different

Traditional vulnerability scanners usually look for technical weaknesses.

Business-flow abuse may involve:

• Valid authentication
• Valid authorization
• Valid API syntax
• Legitimate endpoints

The security problem is the frequency, sequence, scale or intent behind the requests.

How to Protect Sensitive API Business Flows

Organizations can use:

• Behavioral analysis
• Automation detection
• Rate controls
• Abuse-prevention rules
• Risk-based policies
• Runtime monitoring
• Business-specific limits

Detecting API Abuse and Automated Activity

Runtime analytics can look for repeated workflow execution, unusual sequencing, bot-like velocity and activity that differs from the identity’s expected behavior.

OWASP API7:2023 — Server-Side Request Forgery

Server-Side Request Forgery, or SSRF, occurs when server-side functionality can be manipulated into making unintended requests to other resources.

How SSRF Risks Affect APIs

APIs may accept URLs or external resource locations for operations such as callbacks, imports or remote retrieval.

Without adequate controls, a server could be induced to contact resources the external requester could not reach directly.

Common API SSRF Exposure

Potential targets include:

• Internal services
• Private APIs
• Cloud metadata services
• Internal infrastructure
• Administrative resources

How to Reduce SSRF Risk

Defensive controls include:

• Destination validation
• Approved-host allowlists where practical
• URL validation
• Network egress restrictions
• Segmentation
• Redirect controls
• Restricting supported schemes

The goal is to limit where the server is permitted to communicate rather than relying solely on detecting malicious URL patterns.

OWASP API8:2023 — Security Misconfiguration

Security Misconfiguration occurs when insecure settings, unnecessary features or improperly hardened environments expose APIs to avoidable risk.

Common API Misconfigurations

Examples include:

• Debug functionality
• Default configurations
• Missing TLS
• Permissive CORS
• Unnecessary HTTP methods
• Exposed documentation
• Unprotected management interfaces
• Unnecessary services

How to Secure API Configurations

Organizations should:

• Establish secure configuration baselines
• Separate development and production settings
• Automate configuration checks
• Harden production environments
• Apply patch management
• Remove unnecessary functionality
• Monitor configuration drift

Security Misconfiguration remains API8 in the OWASP API Security Top 10 2023.

OWASP API9:2023 — Improper Inventory Management

Improper Inventory Management is the API visibility problem: organizations cannot reliably secure APIs when they do not know what endpoints, hosts and versions exist.

What Is API Inventory Management?

A useful API inventory should track:

• API endpoints
• Hosts
• Versions
• Environments
• Documentation
• Ownership
• Exposure
• Authentication
• Lifecycle status

What Are Shadow and Rogue APIs?

Important categories include:

Shadow APIs: endpoints operating outside expected documentation or management.

Rogue APIs: APIs operating outside approved security or governance controls.

Deprecated APIs: old versions that should no longer be actively used.

Forgotten APIs: assets that remain accessible even though teams have lost operational ownership.

Why API Discovery Is Essential

Unknown APIs can escape:

• Security testing
• Runtime monitoring
• Authentication improvements
• Risk assessment
• Threat detection
• Governance
• Retirement processes

OWASP API9 specifically focuses on Improper Inventory Management as a current API security risk.

Continuous API Discovery and Inventory

SecurEnds currently offers dedicated API Inventory & Discovery capabilities. Its API Security positioning describes discovery across cloud, edge, on-premises and hybrid environments and states that it can uncover known, unknown, internal and external APIs.

For the complete workflow, see [Internal Link: API Discovery].

OWASP API10:2023 — Unsafe Consumption of APIs

Modern applications consume other APIs continuously.

Unsafe Consumption of APIs occurs when developers place excessive trust in third-party API responses or apply weaker security requirements to external integrations.

OWASP notes that developers may trust third-party API endpoints and apply weaker controls around transport, authentication, authorization or input validation.

Common Third-Party API Risks

These can include:

• Compromised providers
• Malicious responses
• Weak authentication
• Insufficient validation
• Excessive trust
• Unsafe redirects
• Poor dependency oversight

How to Secure Third-Party API Consumption

Organizations should:

• Validate external API data
• Use appropriate TLS
• Secure authentication
• Restrict redirects
• Review dependencies
• Monitor critical integrations
• Scope permissions
• Perform risk assessments

Managing Third-Party API Risk

Third-party API relationships should have owners, credentials, documented purpose and lifecycle processes.

A trusted vendor should not become an unrestricted trust boundary.

OWASP API Security Risks by Control Area

Grouping the risks by security domain helps teams translate the Top 10 into operational responsibilities.

Identity and Authentication Risks

API2

Broken Authentication affects the organization’s ability to trust the identity behind a request.

Authorization Risks

API1, API3 and API5

These address:

• Objects
• Properties
• Functions

Together they demonstrate why authentication and authorization must be treated separately.

Resource and Abuse Risks

API4 and API6

These address excessive resource usage and abuse of legitimate business functionality.

Infrastructure Risks

API7 and API8

These concern server-side communication and insecure configuration.

Visibility and Inventory Risks

API9

This focuses on incomplete API visibility.

Third-Party API Risks

API10

This focuses on unsafe trust in external API services.

The practical takeaway is that an effective API security program requires:

Visibility + Assessment + Protection + Detection + Governance

How to Assess APIs Against the OWASP API Security Top 10

OWASP-aligned API assessment should begin with understanding the environment.

Discover and Inventory APIs

Identify public, internal, partner, shadow and legacy APIs.

Classify API Risk

Determine:

• Exposure
• Data sensitivity
• Business importance
• Privileged functionality
• Lifecycle status

Map Authentication and Authorization

Understand which human and machine identities access each API and what roles or permissions they hold.

Validate API Schemas and Specifications

Compare expected API structures and behavior with actual implementations.

SecurEnds’ API Security portfolio currently lists Schema & Specification Validation as a dedicated capability.

Test Authorization Controls

Test:

• Object access
• Property access
• Function access
• Cross-user access
• Privilege boundaries

Assess Authentication

Evaluate token validation, credential handling and authentication-abuse scenarios.

Test Resource Controls

Check:

• Rate limits
• Expensive functions
• Payload limits
• Request volumes

Assess Business Logic

Test how valid operations can be combined, repeated or automated.

Review API Configuration

Evaluate runtime and deployment settings.

Assess Third-Party API Connections

Review external trust relationships and response validation.

Continuously Monitor API Behavior

Look for new risks after deployment.

The operating sequence becomes:

Discover → Assess → Test → Remediate → Monitor → Retest

OWASP also maintains an API Security Testing Framework designed around automated testing of the API Security Top 10 2023.

For the full process, see [Internal Link: API Security Testing].

OWASP API Security Best Practices

Organizations can turn the OWASP categories into practical operating controls.

Maintain Complete API Discovery and Inventory

Know which APIs and versions exist.

Identify Shadow and Rogue APIs

Bring unmanaged assets into formal security processes.

Validate API Schemas and Specifications

Identify unexpected behavior and implementation drift.

Enforce Strong Authentication

Use identity controls appropriate to API sensitivity.

Enforce Fine-Grained Authorization

Apply authorization to objects, properties and functions.

Apply Least Privilege

Limit human and machine identities to required permissions.

Protect APIs at Runtime

Monitor and enforce controls while APIs process real requests.

Detect Abnormal API Behavior

Look for unusual traffic, identity activity and resource access.

Prevent API Abuse and Automated Attacks

Detect harmful use of legitimate functionality.

Apply Rate Limits and Resource Controls

Restrict excessive consumption.

Monitor API Activity Continuously

Do not rely only on pre-production assessment.

Secure Third-Party API Integrations

Validate external responses and manage dependencies.

Retire Deprecated APIs

Remove obsolete endpoints and credentials.

Maintain API Governance and Compliance

Assign ownership and maintain evidence around security controls.

For broader implementation detail, see [Internal Link: API Security Best Practices].

OWASP API Security Checklist

API Discovery

• All APIs are inventoried.
• Unknown APIs are investigated.
• Shadow APIs are identified.
• API versions are tracked.
• Deprecated APIs are retired.

Authentication

• Authentication is enforced.
• Tokens are correctly validated.
• Credentials are protected.
• Authentication abuse is monitored.

Authorization

• Object-level authorization is enforced.
• Property-level authorization is enforced.
• Function-level authorization is enforced.
• Privileged access is restricted.
• Least privilege is applied.

Runtime Protection

• Rate limits are implemented.
• Abnormal traffic is monitored.
• Automated abuse is detected.
• Sensitive business flows are protected.
• High-risk APIs receive stronger controls.

Configuration

• Production APIs are hardened.
• TLS is enforced where required.
• Debug features are disabled.
• Unnecessary functionality is removed.

Third-Party APIs

• External responses are validated.
• Third-party connections are inventoried.
• External credentials are appropriately scoped.
• Critical API dependencies are monitored.

For a more comprehensive assessment framework, see [Internal Link: API Security Checklist].

How API Discovery Helps Reduce OWASP API Security Risks

API discovery is most directly connected to API9:2023 Improper Inventory Management, but its value extends further.

Discovery helps identify:

• Unknown APIs
• Shadow APIs
• Rogue APIs
• Deprecated versions
• New endpoints
• Externally exposed assets
• API ownership gaps

SecurEnds currently positions API Inventory & Discovery as a dedicated API Security capability and describes its API discovery approach as providing visibility across cloud, edge, on-premises and hybrid environments.

Once an API is discovered, organizations can move it into:

Inventory → Assessment → Testing → Monitoring → Protection

That is why discovery is foundational: organizations cannot assess or protect assets they cannot see.

[Internal Link: API Discovery]

How API Runtime Protection Helps Address OWASP Threats

Pre-production testing answers:

Where are the weaknesses?

Runtime protection answers:

What malicious or abusive activity is happening now, and what should be done about it?

Relevant runtime controls can include:

• Authentication enforcement
• Access controls
• Rate limits
• Behavioral detection
• Threat monitoring
• Abuse prevention
• Automated response

SecurEnds’ current API Security pages describe behavior-based anomaly detection and automatic enforcement of rate limits, authentication and access controls.

Runtime protection is particularly relevant to risks involving:

• API2 Broken Authentication
• API4 Unrestricted Resource Consumption
• API5 Broken Function Level Authorization
• API6 Sensitive Business Flow abuse
• API8 Security Misconfiguration

It does not replace secure development or remediation of underlying vulnerabilities.

[Internal Link: API Runtime Protection]

How API Threat Detection Helps Identify Abnormal Activity

Not every API attack produces a recognizable vulnerability signature.

Threat detection focuses on runtime behaviors such as:

• Abnormal API requests
• Credential abuse
• Bot activity
• Scraping
• Automated attacks
• Unusual traffic
• Unexpected API usage
• Suspicious application behavior

SecurEnds’ dedicated API Threat Detection offering describes real-time monitoring of API traffic, behavioral analysis, anomaly detection and alerting across API environments.

The operating cycle becomes:

Detect → Analyze → Respond

Behavioral context is particularly important when an attacker uses valid credentials or legitimate business functionality.

[Internal Link: API Threat Detection]

How SecurEnds Helps Organizations Address OWASP API Security Risks

SecurEnds now provides dedicated API Security capabilities that align with several operational requirements organizations face when addressing OWASP API risks.

It should not be assumed to eliminate every OWASP vulnerability automatically. The more accurate positioning is that SecurEnds provides API discovery, security validation, threat detection and access-control capabilities that can support an OWASP-aligned API security program.

Discover and Inventory APIs

SecurEnds’ API Inventory & Discovery capabilities are designed to identify known, unknown, external and internal APIs across cloud, edge, on-premises and hybrid environments.

This directly supports the visibility challenge behind API9 Improper Inventory Management.

Identify API Security Risks

SecurEnds positions its API Security solution around discovering APIs, assessing risk and applying contextual security controls.

This helps teams move beyond raw endpoint inventories toward prioritized API-security visibility.

Validate API Schemas and Specifications

Schema & Specification Validation is currently listed as one of SecurEnds’ dedicated API Security capabilities.

Specification validation can help identify differences between expected API structure and implemented behavior.

Protect APIs Against OWASP Threats

SecurEnds states that its API Security offering can automatically enforce rate limits, authentication and access controls.

These controls are relevant to areas such as authentication abuse, excessive resource consumption and unauthorized access, although they should complement—not replace—secure application-level authorization.

Detect API Threats and Abnormal Behavior

SecurEnds provides dedicated API Threat Detection capabilities using real-time monitoring and behavioral analysis. Its threat-detection page describes monitoring requests, identifying abnormal patterns and supporting real-time alerts and automated response actions.

Protect Against API Abuse and Bots

SecurEnds’ API Security page specifically describes behavior-based anomaly detection for bot activity.

This can support detection of automated abuse and unusual API behavior relevant to sensitive business flows.

Strengthen Authentication and Access Controls

SecurEnds’ API Security portfolio includes Authentication & Authorization Vulnerabilities as a dedicated capability, along with API-to-API Adaptive MFA.

Its adaptive-authentication offering describes contextual risk scoring and MFA for API-to-API access.

Govern API Security and Compliance

SecurEnds’ broader platform combines API Security with identity governance, entitlement visibility and risk-management capabilities. Its API Security page also emphasizes centralized API visibility and compliance support.

This can help organizations connect technical API-security findings with ownership, access governance and ongoing control evidence.

[Internal Link: SecurEnds API Security]
[Internal Link: SecurEnds API Discovery]
[Internal Link: SecurEnds API Threat Detection]

Building an OWASP-Aligned API Security Strategy

Organizations can translate the OWASP framework into an operational security program using the following sequence.

Step 1: Discover Every API

Identify public, internal, partner, shadow and legacy APIs.

Step 2: Inventory and Classify APIs

Document ownership, exposure, versions, sensitive data and business criticality.

Step 3: Assess API Security Risks

Evaluate authentication, authorization, resource controls, configuration and external dependencies.

Step 4: Validate API Specifications

Compare expected API behavior against actual implementation.

Step 5: Protect APIs at Runtime

Apply authentication, authorization, rate limits and other appropriate runtime controls.

Step 6: Detect Threats and Abnormal Behavior

Monitor API traffic for malicious activity, abuse, automation and unusual identity behavior.

Step 7: Govern API Security

Maintain:

• Ownership
• Access policies
• Entitlement governance
• Auditability
• Lifecycle management
• Compliance evidence

Step 8: Continuously Test and Improve

APIs evolve.

Retest after changes, investigate runtime findings and continuously improve policies.

The full model is:

Discover → Assess → Protect → Detect → Govern → Improve

Why an Integrated API Security Approach Matters

API security cannot depend on one control because each layer answers a different question.

API Discovery
What APIs exist?

↓

API Inventory
What are they, who owns them and how sensitive are they?

↓

Risk Assessment
Where are the likely security weaknesses?

↓

Security Testing
Can those weaknesses actually be demonstrated?

↓

Runtime Protection
What harmful activity should be blocked or restricted now?

↓

Threat Detection
What suspicious or abusive behavior is occurring?

↓

Governance
Are APIs, identities and permissions being managed continuously?

OWASP provides a valuable risk framework, while integrated API security turns awareness into continuous operational control.

Move From OWASP Awareness to Continuous API Security

The OWASP API Security Top 10 is an essential framework for understanding API-specific risk, but modern API security requires more than knowing the ten categories.

Organizations need to:

Discover APIs → Understand risks → Assess vulnerabilities → Protect APIs → Detect threats → Govern continuously

This means maintaining complete API visibility, enforcing authentication and authorization, controlling resource consumption, protecting sensitive workflows, validating API behavior, monitoring runtime activity and managing API risk as environments change.

SecurEnds’ current API Security portfolio brings together API discovery, threat detection, schema and specification validation, authentication and authorization security capabilities, and adaptive API-to-API authentication.

Explore how SecurEnds can help your organization discover, secure and govern APIs across modern environments.

[Internal Link: SecurEnds API Security]

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OWASP API security?

OWASP API Security is the API-focused security guidance maintained through the OWASP API Security Project.

It is designed to help developers, architects, security teams and organizations understand vulnerabilities and security risks that are particularly relevant to APIs.

What are the OWASP API Security Top 10 risks?

The 2023 risks are Broken Object Level Authorization, Broken Authentication, Broken Object Property Level Authorization, Unrestricted Resource Consumption, Broken Function Level Authorization, Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows, Server-Side Request Forgery, Security Misconfiguration, Improper Inventory Management and Unsafe Consumption of APIs.

What is Broken Object Level Authorization?

Broken Object Level Authorization occurs when an API fails to verify whether an identity is permitted to access a specific object referenced in a request.

OWASP identifies this as API1:2023 and emphasizes object-level authorization checks whenever APIs access resources using user-controlled identifiers.

How do you test an API against the OWASP API Security Top 10?

Start with API discovery and inventory, classify risk, map identities and roles, and then test authentication, object authorization, property authorization, function authorization, resource limits, business logic, configuration and third-party API interactions.

Combine automated testing with manual analysis and retest after remediation.

[Internal Link: API Security Testing]

What is the difference between OWASP Top 10 and OWASP API Security Top 10?

The OWASP Top 10 addresses major web-application security risks broadly, while the OWASP API Security Top 10 focuses specifically on security risks associated with APIs.

OWASP states that its API Top 10 complements rather than replaces other Top 10 resources.

How can organizations protect APIs against OWASP threats?

Organizations should combine API discovery, secure authentication, fine-grained authorization, rate and resource controls, configuration hardening, API security testing, runtime monitoring, threat detection and governance.

No single control addresses all ten OWASP API risks.

What is API discovery and why is it important?

API discovery is the process of identifying known and unknown APIs so they can be inventoried, assessed, monitored and secured.

It is particularly relevant to OWASP API9 Improper Inventory Management because unknown or outdated APIs can remain outside security processes.

SecurEnds currently provides dedicated API Inventory & Discovery capabilities.

How does API runtime protection work?

API runtime protection observes live API activity and applies security decisions while APIs are operating.

It can combine traffic monitoring, behavioral analysis, rate limits, authentication controls, access controls and threat-response actions to reduce malicious or abusive API activity.

SecurEnds currently describes behavioral anomaly detection and automatic enforcement of rate limits, authentication and access controls within its API Security offering.