What is API Discovery?

API discovery is the process of identifying and classifying APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) within an organization's digital environment. API Discovery enables the systematic discovery of APIs, giving organizations complete insight and control over the APIs available across their networks.

This blog will explore API Discovery, including its importance, types, functionality, tools, and key challenges in API Discovery.

What is API Discovery?

API Discovery is the creation of a centralized repository or API registry, which acts as a uniform database for documenting all APIs, whether internal (private APIs used within the organization) or external (public APIs used to communicate with external partners or customers).

This repository serves as the official source of information for the organization's entire API architecture, reducing the risk of unmanaged or unprotected APIs. This approach guarantees that security engineers, DevOps teams, and system administrators can efficiently manage the APIs, which includes creation, versioning, security, and discontinuation.

What does API Discovery Discover?

API discovery discovers and categorizes all APIs inside an organization's environment, including:

1. Public APIs

Public APIs, also known as external or open APIs, enable external developers and users outside the organization to access them. They enable third-party integrations, allowing external applications or services to interact with the organization's systems. For example, a social media platform might offer a public API to allow external developers to integrate their applications with its services.

2. Internal APIs

Internal APIs are intended for use within the organization. They facilitate communication and data exchange between internal systems, services, or applications. By using internal APIs, organizations can modularize their architecture, promoting reusability and efficient internal processes. For instance, an internal API might allow the HR system to communicate with the payroll system to process employee salaries.

3. Shadow APIs

Shadow APIs are APIs that organizations fail to document or authorize, causing them to exist without the knowledge of IT or security teams. Developers often create these APIs for testing or specific projects and deploy them without following standard governance protocols.

These APIs pose significant security risks because they often lack proper security measures and oversight. For example, a developer might create a temporary API endpoint for a specific task and forget to remove it, leaving it vulnerable to exploitation.

4. Zombie APIs

Zombie APIs refer to outdated or deprecated APIs that teams or systems fail to shut down, leaving them operational but no longer actively maintained or used. Version updates often lead to these APIs when teams do not properly retire old API versions.

These APIs become security vulnerabilities because organizations or teams might fail to apply necessary updates or patches. For instance, an old version of a login API might still allow access even after developers deploy a new version, providing a potential attack vector.

5. Endpoints and Methods

Endpoints are specific URLs or URIs that clients use to access APIs. Methods, also known as HTTP methods (such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), define the type of operation that clients perform at the endpoint.

Each API specifies a set of endpoints and methods that outline the available functions and data interactions. For example, an API might include an endpoint /users with a GET method to retrieve user information and a POST method to create a new user.

How Does API Discovery Impact API Security?

API discovery is a fundamental component of safeguarding APIs, offering critical security advantages by systematically identifying and cataloging all APIs within an organization’s ecosystem. Comprehensive discovery enhances visibility by providing a detailed overview of all APIs, including undocumented or unmanaged "shadow APIs."

This process reduces blind spots, ensuring that the security team accounts for and monitors all APIs effectively. Additionally, API discovery helps identify risks by uncovering outdated or vulnerable APIs that could expose sensitive data. Recognizing these weak points allows organizations to address them promptly, bolstering their overall security posture.

Moreover, API discovery plays a crucial role in ensuring compliance with regulatory standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS by maintaining an accurate inventory of APIs and ensuring their protection.

It also mitigates threats that 'shadow' and 'zombie' APIs pose, which are undocumented or deprecated but still operational, reducing potential attack vectors. Finally, API discovery facilitates the implementation of robust access control measures, ensuring secure authentication and authorization tailored to the current API landscape, thereby minimizing the risk of unauthorized data access.

How does Akto help with API Discovery?

Akto enhances API discovery through a comprehensive approach that combines automated source code analysis with real-time traffic monitoring. This dual methodology ensures that organizations maintain an up-to-date and complete inventory of all APIs, including internal, external, third-party, shadow, and zombie APIs.

Automated API Discovery from Source Code

Akto's platform scans source code repositories to identify APIs as they are developed, capturing changes in real-time. This proactive strategy eliminates the risk of undocumented or forgotten APIs, providing security teams with immediate visibility into new or modified endpoints. By integrating directly with source code management systems like GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab, Akto ensures that API documentation remains current and comprehensive.

Real-Time Traffic Monitoring

Beyond code analysis, Akto employs over 40 traffic connectors to monitor API interactions across various environments, including cloud and on-premises systems. This real-time monitoring detects active APIs, identifies shadow and zombie APIs, and assesses their exposure to potential threats.

By correlating data from both code and runtime environments, Akto provides a holistic view of the API landscape, enabling dynamic risk assessment and facilitating prompt remediation of vulnerabilities.

Importance of API Discovery

API Discovery is a crucial aspect of modern software infrastructure that brings several key benefits to organizations. Let's explore why API Discovery has become an indispensable tool for organizations.

Improved Security

APIs are gateways for data exchange, and any vulnerability in them can expose critical systems to attacks. With API Discovery, organizations can identify shadow APIs—undocumented, deprecated, or forgotten endpoints that hackers often exploit. These APIs may lack adequate security measures, making them susceptible to attacks such as injection vulnerabilities, authentication bypasses, and misconfigurations.

Operational Efficiency

In large organizations, different teams build and use APIs independently, duplicating functionality and inefficiencies. API Discovery helps teams reuse APIs by keeping an accurate inventory of current ones and reducing redundancy. Teams can focus on innovation rather than recreating APIs, saving time and money. It also optimizes API usage by notifying services of endpoints, reducing rework.

Compliance and Governance

Many organizations have to comply with data management and security regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. These requirements frequently require full visibility into an organization's data flows, including APIs.

API Discovery helps organizations comply with these rules by monitoring and tracking all APIs, especially those handling sensitive or personal data. It also improves governance by allowing teams to apply similar policies across all APIs to fulfill internal and external legal standards.

API Lifecycle Management

Organizations discontinue earlier API versions as APIs change. Managing API versions and retiring outdated APIs is difficult without API Discovery. API Discovery tracks all API versions, helping teams replace insecure versions and upgrade systems that use them. This prevents service outages and keeps APIs current, safe, and optimized.

Faster Incident Response

API Discovery provides an inventory of all APIs, including configurations, security protocols, and usage, to speed up incident response in the case of a data breach or vulnerability attack. Security engineers can quickly discover and identify harmful APIs, implement updates, and revoke endpoint access using this inventory.

Types of API Discovery

Organizations use a variety of API Discovery methods to identify, categorize, and understand the APIs that operate within their infrastructure. The following are the main types of API discovery:

1. Automated API Discovery

Automated API Discovery leverages advanced tools and technologies to scan and map APIs across an organization's ecosystem. These tools continuously analyze networks, application logs, and API gateways to detect APIs, including undocumented and outdated ones.

This approach is particularly beneficial in dynamic and complex environments where manual tracking is unfeasible. Automated methods ensure that organizations maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date inventory of APIs, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and inefficiencies.

2. Manual API Discovery

In manual API Discovery, teams such as security engineers, system administrators, and DevOps professionals actively search for and document APIs in use. This process often involves reviewing documentation, interacting with development teams, and examining configuration files and logs.

Although labor-intensive and time-consuming, the manual discovery provides detailed insights that automated methods might miss, especially in smaller environments or where specialized tools are unavailable.

3. Self-Descriptive APIs

Self-descriptive APIs simplify the discovery process by providing metadata about their structure and functionality. These APIs often include specifications such as OpenAPI or Swagger, which detail endpoints, data formats, authentication mechanisms, and request/response patterns.

Discovery tools can use this metadata to automatically catalog APIs and understand their purpose. By adopting self-descriptive APIs, organizations can enhance both visibility and usability, streamlining the integration and monitoring processes.

4. API Gateways and Management Platforms

API gateways and management platforms play a pivotal role in API Discovery by acting as centralized points for API traffic. These platforms monitor all API interactions, offering real-time insights into usage patterns and active endpoints.

As a result, they help organizations build a comprehensive API inventory. In large-scale infrastructures, API gateways facilitate seamless discovery and management, ensuring that no one misses any API while also enabling enhanced traffic control and security enforcement.

5. Traffic-Based API Discovery

Traffic-based API Discovery identifies APIs by analyzing network activity. This method involves monitoring HTTP or other protocol traffic to detect API endpoints and their usage patterns. It particularly uncovers undocumented or rogue APIs that other methods might not capture. By observing live traffic, organizations can gain a real-time understanding of their API ecosystem, addressing potential blind spots and security risks in the process.

How API Discovery Works?

API Discovery involves a systematic process of identifying, documenting, and monitoring APIs across an organization's infrastructure. Let's explore the key steps and components that make API Discovery work effectively.

1. Environmental Scanning and Identification

The process begins with scanning the environment to locate all APIs. Tools and methods vary depending on the organization's infrastructure complexity. Network traffic monitoring plays a significant role, where tools observe API requests and responses to uncover active endpoints and associated metadata, such as request types and payloads.

In addition, source code scanning is employed to identify API calls embedded in repositories like Git or Bitbucket, which can reveal internal or third-party APIs. For organizations using API gateways, these gateways provide a centralized view by routing all API traffic, enabling the automatic discovery of APIs in real-time.

2. Classification and Documentation

Once APIs are identified, they are classified and thoroughly documented. This step involves mapping endpoints, supported methods, and base URLs to create a comprehensive API structure. API versions are tracked to identify deprecated or obsolete versions, ensuring compatibility and security.

Security teams evaluate security practices by documenting authentication methods, such as API keys or OAuth, and analyzing authorization protocols. Tools also extract schemas that define request and response formats, creating detailed documentation such as OpenAPI specifications. APIs are categorized based on their roles—internal, external, or partner-facing—and tagged for efficient management, aligning them with their respective teams or use cases.

3. Real-Time Monitoring and Continuous Discovery

After the initial discovery, tools enable ongoing monitoring to detect changes or new APIs in real-time. This is crucial in dynamic environments like microservices architectures, where APIs can be rapidly deployed or modified. Continuous monitoring tracks API traffic, ensuring that newly created or updated APIs are documented and integrated immediately into the central catalog.

In addition to discovery, tools often monitor API health and performance metrics, such as latency and error rates, to identify and address potential bottlenecks. Security teams integrate monitoring to detect misconfigurations, insecure endpoints, and suspicious activities like abnormal traffic patterns or failed authentication attempts, ensuring proactive risk mitigation.

4. API Lifecycle Management

API Discovery supports an API's entire lifecycle, from creation and updates to deprecation and removal. Tools track API version releases, helping teams ensure compatibility across systems while flagging outdated versions for replacement.

During API deprecation, teams identify dependencies to ensure seamless transitions without disrupting services. Organizations maintain governance and compliance by enforcing security policies and regulatory requirements, such as data encryption and adherence to GDPR or HIPAA standards. This ensures that APIs remain secure, functional, and aligned with organizational objectives.

5. Integration with DevOps and CI/CD Pipelines

API Discovery integrates seamlessly with DevOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines, ensuring that APIs are automatically identified and documented throughout the development lifecycle. When developers deploy new APIs, discovery tools scan the environment and update the catalog, minimizing manual tracking efforts.

This integration fosters a feedback loop between developers and security teams, enabling early detection and resolution of documentation errors, security gaps, or performance issues. By embedding API Discovery into the development process, organizations maintain an up-to-date and secure API ecosystem while streamlining development and deployment cycles.

Challenges in API Discovery

API Discovery is essential for an organization, but several challenges should be addressed. Here are some of the challenges in API discovery:

1. Shadow APIs

One of the most difficult challenges with API Discovery is detecting shadow APIs, which exist but are undocumented, unmonitored, or forgotten. Development teams often create these APIs during rapid development cycles or for short-term use. Shadow APIs have a substantial security risk since they lack the same monitoring and security measures as documented APIs, making them open to attacks like data leaks or unauthorized access.

2. API Sprawl

Organizations are struggling with API sprawl, which occurs when teams create and use hundreds or thousands of APIs across several environments and platforms. This can make it challenging for security engineers and DevOps teams to keep track of all APIs and ensure they document, secure, and manage them properly.

3. Lack of Centralized API Management

Diverse teams develop and deploy APIs, but they don't have a consistent API management strategy or centralized API gateway. This leads to fragmented API management, where various teams use different techniques for API documentation, versioning, and security. Without centralized governance, it is difficult for teams to locate, document, and secure APIs consistently throughout the organization.

4. Real-time API Changes

APIs are often updated or modified in real-time, particularly in systems that use continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Teams can release new versions, developers add or remove endpoints, and API traffic patterns can change quickly. Keeping track of these dynamic changes is difficult for API discovery tools because the API inventory can quickly become outdated if teams do not monitor it continuously.

5. Security and Compliance Issues

Maintaining compliance with industry regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS is becoming increasingly difficult as the use of third-party APIs and complicated API interfaces grows. APIs that handle sensitive data must comply with these requirements, and failing to detect or monitor such APIs can result in severe legal and financial consequences.

Final Thoughts

API Discovery is essential for every organization that uses APIs to provide digital services. By providing visibility into all APIs, both internal and external, API Discovery optimizes performance, improves security, and increases operational efficiency. It is an ongoing process that allows security engineers to monitor the API lifecycle effectively.

Akto offers a complete API discovery and API security solution that gives organizations real-time visibility of their API landscape. Its broad capabilities assist security engineers in discovering, monitoring, and securing APIs while keeping them compliant and optimized for performance. Schedule a demo and take control of the API administration today.

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