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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 that Salt customers experienced a 117% increase in API attack traffic while their overall API traffic grew 168%, highlighting the continued explosion of enterprise API usage. With malicious API traffic accounting for 2.1% of overall traffic, API attack attempts moved from an average of 12.22M malicious calls per month a year ago to an average of 26.46M calls this past June. Among Salt customers, 44% are suffering an average of 11 to 100 attack attempts every month, and 34% are enduring more than 100 attempts each month, with 8% suffering more than 1000.

"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 a vigorous API security strategy is critical, as 61% of survey respondents now 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 ability to stop attacks is cited as the most valuable API security capability, while applying shift-left practices rated the lowest

When asked which of six attributes of API security platforms are “highly important,” the ability to stop attacks took the top position, with 41% of respondents citing it. The ability to identify which APIs expose PII or sensitive data took the second spot, with 40% of respondents indicating that feature as highly important. Meeting compliance or regulatory needs took the third spot, with 39% of respondents. Applying shift-left practices came in at the bottom of the list, with only 22% of respondents choosing it as highly important.

An overreliance on "shift left" practices continues to fail the enterprise

Shift left strategies alone continue to leave organizations and their APIs exposed. While 53% of respondents focused on fixing gaps during development, and 59% looked for API issues in testing, a whopping 94% still suffered API security incidents, reflecting a need for increased runtime protection. In this latest report, just 30% of respondents say they identify and remediate API security gaps in runtime. Yet to fully protect what’s already running within their environments, organizations require runtime protection capabilities.

Security concerns delay new application action rollouts for majority of respondents

More than half of respondents (54%) indicated they’ve had to slow the rollout of new applications because of API security concerns. Poor API design and security practices are often at the root of sensitive PII data leaks, and survey responses reinforce this challenge – nearly a third of respondents admit they’ve experienced sensitive data exposure or a privacy incident within their API production over the past year, a sharp increase compared to last year’s 19%. Within the Salt customer base, 91% of APIs have exposed some PII or sensitive data, making it imperative for organizations to know how and where data is transmitted so they can best protect those APIs with extra diligence.

Security concerns and “zombie” APIs create the biggest worries

Survey respondents reported that not investing enough in pre-production security (20%) and not adequately addressing runtime security (18%) were their top concerns about their API strategy. When asked about the most concerning API security risks, 42% said outdated or "zombie" APIs. Zombie APIs have been the #1 concern in the past four surveys from Salt, likely the result of increasingly fast-paced development as organizations seek to maximize the business value associated with APIs. Account takeover and the accidental exposure of sensitive information were tied as second-highest concerns, at 15% each, followed by worries over “shadow” or unknown APIs, which rose from 5% to 11% in the past six months.

WAFs and API Gateways continue to miss API attacks

As in previous surveys, respondents said they primarily rely on traditional tools to manage APIs and protect against application attacks. Most respondents rely on API gateways (54%) and WAFs (44%) to identify attacks. The gaps of these traditional tools are made clear by the finding that 82% don’t believe their existing tools are very effective at preventing API attacks and 94% endured an API security incident.

Multiple (solvable) obstacles are preventing strong API security strategies

A significant majority of respondents (61%) admitted they lack any or have only a basic API security strategy in place, a concern given the high reliance on APIs for achieving critical business outcomes. Despite all survey respondents having APIs running in production, a shockingly small percentage (9%) stated they have an advanced API strategy that includes dedicated API testing and protection. The top reasons for a lack of a robust API strategy included budget (24%), expertise (20%), resources (19%), and time (11%).

Additional findings from the State of API Security Report:

91% of APIs running within the Salt customer base are exposing PII or sensitive data

API changes are on the rise - 11% of respondents update their APIs daily, 31% do so weekly, and 24% less often than every month

Just about half the respondents (55%) say their security team highlights the OWASP API Security Top 10 in their security program, down from 61% six months ago, an unfortunate finding given that 62% of attempted attacks within the Salt customer base leveraged at least one of the methods on that list

86% of respondents lack confidence that their API inventory is complete, and 14% admit they are unaware of which APIs expose PII

64% of respondents say that API security has helped security collaborate and even embed with DevOps teams