Salt Security, an API security company, released the “Salt Labs State of API Security Report, Q3 2022.” In its latest edition, the bi-annual report found that 94 percent of survey respondents experienced security problems this past year in the production of APIs, with 20 percent stating their organizations suffered a data breach as a result of security gaps in APIs.
In addition, the report found that API attack traffic has doubled in the past 12 months.
The findings highlight that existing solutions and API security tactics focused on shift-left strategies are failing to adequately protect APIs.
The State of API Security Report pulls from a combination of survey responses and empirical data from the Salt Security Cloud Service. The Q3 2022 report finds Salt customers experienced a 117 percent increase in API attack traffic while their overall API traffic grew 168 percent, highlighting the explosion of enterprise API usage.
With malicious API traffic accounting for 2.1 percent of overall traffic, API attack attempts moved from an average of 12.22 million malicious calls per month a year ago to an average of 26.46 million calls this past June. Among Salt customers, 44 percent suffer an average of 11 to 100 attack attempts every month, and 34 percent endure more than 100 attempts each month.
“The backbone of our modern economy, digitalization has made organizations increasingly reliant on APIs to deliver new services and better compete. This focus on digital innovation, however, has also put a target on these organizations, as this research makes clear,” said Roey Eliyahu, co-founder and CEO, Salt Security. “With API attacks accelerating year over year, it’s no wonder our survey shows security as the top concern about API strategies. The report findings also show the need for a more robust API security strategy – starting with development but especially focused on runtime – to better protect this expanding attack surface and companies’ most valuable assets.”
Developing an API security strategy is critical, as 61 percent of survey respondents manage more than 100 APIs. With key enterprise initiatives so closely tied to API usage, companies have no tolerance for deployment delays or rollbacks. But more than half of survey respondents reported delaying new application rollouts because of API security concerns.
The State of API Security Report’s Q3 2022 survey results are clear. Respondents overwhelmingly stated that reliance on APIs is growing as APIs become more imperative to their organizations’ success. However, security tools and processes can’t keep pace with new API protocols and attack trends. API traffic and usage trends within the Salt customer base confirm these observations. Organizations must move from traditional security practices and last-generation tools to a modern security strategy that addresses security at every stage of the API lifecycle and provides a broad range of protections that foster collaboration across teams.
The report was compiled by researchers from Salt Labs, the research division of Salt Security, using data from more than 350 respondents across a range of job responsibilities, industries, and company sizes. Companies are evenly represented, in addition to anonymized and aggregated empirical data from Salt Security customers obtained through the Salt Security API Protection Platform.
To learn more about Salt Security or to request a demo, please visit https://content.salt.security/demo.html.
