Rock and roll. Food and drink. Web application security and API security. Some things are just better together, especially when keeping them separate means inefficiencies, costs, and increased risk. But while nobody has problems combining food and drink, putting API and application security on the same table has been a challenge—until now. With its API Security offering on the Invicti Platform, Invicti now boasts the industry’s first full menu of discovery and dynamic security testing across web applications and APIs to identify and test your entire web attack surface within a single solution.
But enough of the food metaphors. Research shows that most organizations have an average of 26 APIs per app, yet only 25% accurately inventory their APIs. With the increasing number of APIs woven into web applications to speed up the development process, even just keeping tabs on APIs can be a major challenge—and that’s before you get to putting them through security testing in a way that keeps up with the pace of development. Compared to the UI part of applications, APIs are a security weak spot for many organizations, not least because of disjointed tools and processes that keep API security separated from the rest of AppSec.
To help solve this very real issue plaguing security and development teams, Invicti has launched a new capability within its market-leading API security and application security testing platform: multi-layered API discovery. With discovery bolstering your ability to find APIs, test them for vulnerabilities, and fix security issues before they become expensive security incidents, you get visibility across the entire UI and API attack surface to make AppSec proactive rather than purely reactive. Discovery and security testing. Applications and APIs. It’s like peaches and cream, only better.
Solving the API and tool sprawl conundrum
For an idea of the sheer numbers involved, there are hundreds of millions of APIs in existence, handling billions of requests each year. On the popular Postman API platform alone, there are over 120 million API collections, and just from May 2023 to May 2024, 1.29 billion API requests were created. There are APIs everywhere, both managed and unmanaged, and more are being created every minute, presenting a problem for development and security alike: how do you manage and secure all the APIs your organization is running? How can you know your realistic attack exposure? And how do you secure every part of the total attack surface if you can never be certain what you’re exposing? This dire need for visibility fuels tool sprawl and workflow inefficiencies.
Invicti’s new API discovery capability adds that visibility as part of our API Security solution, making it faster and easier to curb the risk from vulnerable APIs deployed in modern web services. Because each application environment is different, Invicti API Security uses a layered approach to API discovery, combining several methods in one tool:
- A zero-configuration option to get you up and running fast, helping you identify API specifications by scanning your cloud environments for API specification files in known or otherwise typical locations
- Integrations with popular API management systems so your teams can always sync the latest API specifications
- Analysis of network API traffic in container deployments such as Kubernetes clusters to identify API calls and reconstruct API definitions based on the observed traffic
All these layers of discovery are integrated into one Invicti Platform that covers API and web application security, increasing coverage and visibility of your attack surface without throwing yet more tools into the mix. “As tool sprawl and budgetary constraints grow, CISOs can rely on the Invicti solution to address the growing API security concerns in addition to reducing their teams’ tooling complexity,” explains Invicti’s CEO Neil Roseman.
Now, as the Invicti Platform comes equipped with more comprehensive API discovery capabilities, the combined coverage of web application and API security means leaders don’t have to worry about adding to increasingly complex tool sprawl, breaking their budget, or sacrificing accuracy. In fact, CISOs and engineering leaders can look at Invicti API Security to help reverse tool sprawl and can shift their focus to other critical business needs.
How automated API discovery fits into the Invicti Platform
Things move fast in development. Agile methodologies and the growing use of AI assistants have dramatically increased the speed and volume of code production, with security often taking a back seat in the rush to bring new features and products to market. Building automated security testing into development pipelines can be a major stumbling block, with subpar tooling and inadequate integration often dragging security efforts down or leaving them by the wayside.
To make efficient security testing a routine part of application and API development, the Invicti Platform was designed with accuracy and automation in mind. Features like proof-based scanning help to confirm exploitable vulnerabilities without the risk of false positives, while a wide array of integrations with industry-standard development and collaboration tools ensures that vulnerability reports are automatically delivered to the right people at the right time.
The addition of API discovery to the Invicti Platform bridges the gap between known specifications and the real-world attack surface, helping you uncover and test applications and APIs that would otherwise have flown under the radar. Once you’ve defined, discovered, and prioritized your app and API assets, Invicti’s DAST-based approach to vulnerability testing provides technology-agnostic coverage without sacrificing accuracy.
Putting discovery and security testing within a single cohesive platform for application and API security reduces tool sprawl and gives you unprecedented visibility into the actual security status of your application environments. And with everything under one roof, API discovery can become a seamless and routine part of your wider application security process, ensuring that you have the most accurate information you can get about your APIs.
How API security and application security come together on the Invicti Platform
Deeper insights for proactive risk management and security
Better discovery, accurate testing, and fully integrated remediation are all part of proactive application security efforts that translate into fewer reactive fire drills once in production. Catching issues with web applications and APIs early on in the development process and within a single integrated platform means that both security and development teams are saving time, sanity, and money they would otherwise have lost on chasing security issues using a motley array of disparate tools.
Being proactive and knowing what to prioritize for testing and remediation can make a world of difference in how effective your security strategy is. Invicti’s recent addition of Predictive Risk Scoring to the Invicti Platform provides advanced prioritization intel to help you decide what to scan and fix first. When deployed with API discovery and web application security testing all in one package and integrated with your existing toolchains, Invicti’s suite of solutions becomes your go-to AppSec platform.
Learn more about Invicti’s API Security solution, now complete with discovery.
