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A Deep Dive into the Concept of API Gateway Security

Updated Date: Sep 3, 2024
Guide to API Gateway Security

Quick Summary: Enforcing API gateway security in the proper manner calls for giving careful thought. Performing security measures without careful consideration could prevent businesses from achieving their actual objectives. In this blog, we are going to discuss API gateway security in detail and everything related to it so you can understand what it is and how it should be performed. Give it a thorough read to master the process of performing API gateway security.

APIs are mechanisms that allow two software components to communicate with each other using a set of definitions and protocols. Since API is a medium of communication and data exchange between the client and server side, transmission of critical information is bound to happen. That is why ensuring APIs’ security is indispensable.

An API gateway is a layer of software that serves as a single-entry point to manage API calls or client requests and return responses from API endpoints. Considering its crucial role in transmitting critical data across the client and server side, it is prerequisite to ensure the API gateway adheres to the latest security patches and fixes.

Research by Fintech Future says 48% of FinTech companies consider API security to be a crucial concern when utilizing APIs.

In this blog, you will learn A-to-Z about API gateway security. By the end of this blog, you will be clear on all the concepts and find solutions to the concerns that you are currently facing in managing your API gateway security.

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Table of Contents
  1. What is API Gateway?
  2. What is API Gateway Security?
  3. Understanding the Role of API Gateway in API Security
  4. API Gateway Security: Understand the Effectiveness
  5. Six Types of API Gateways
  6. Seven API Gateway Security Best Practices
  7. Make Your APIs Vulnerability-free With ZeroThreat

What is API Gateway?

An API gateway is a main component in the architecture of microservices and serverless applications that serves as an entry point for clients to access backend services. It’s a reverse proxy that approves incoming API requests, rate limiting, and request routing, performs authentication and protocol translation, and then forwards the requests to the apt backend service.

Let’s take an example for better understanding: consider the API gateway a bouncer of the club you plan to visit—it controls who gets in, monitors what activities are going on inside, and directs them to where they need to go.

So, the API gateway’s core responsibility is to manage and secure the communication between clients (like apps or websites) and backend services by ensuring smooth and secure communication.

What is API Gateway Security?

API security is the measures and practices performed for API gateway protection by preventing unauthorized access, misusage of data, and security attacks. These security measures ensure that only authenticated sources (apps or users) are accessed by APIs.

Understanding the Role of API Gateway in API Security

Here’s a detailed explanation of the API gateway’s contribution to API security. Let’s refer to them in detail.

1. Authentication and Authorization

API gateway acts as a centralized entry point where clients’ authentication is done before getting access to APIs. This process includes credentials verification, token issuance (such as OAuth tokens or API keys), and access control enforcement to ensure no unauthorized resource can get access to APIs.

2. Encryption

Acting as a TLS termination point, the API gateway verifies that the communication between the client and the gateway and the gateway and the back, too, are encrypted. Maintenance of this encryption ensures that the data remains completely safe from nasty resources during transmission.

3. Traffic Management

Through rate limiting and throttling methodologies, the API gateway minimizes the risk of abuse and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by restricting the number of clients’ requests within a particular time span. By restricting the number of requests, the backend is prevented from being overloaded with requests, and it’s used for fair purposes as resources are authenticated.

4. Input Validation and Filtering

Before connecting to the backend, the API gateway ensures that the incoming requests abide by the standard formats and structures. It filters out malicious content and immediately discards the request that can potentially cause a harmful impact by exploiting vulnerabilities.

5. Integration with Security Infrastructure

API gateways can integrate with existing security infrastructure such as identity providers (IDPs), WAFs (Web Application Firewalls), and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems. This enables centralized management of security protocols and provides enhanced protection against sophisticated security attacks.

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API Gateway Security: Understand the Effectiveness

Let’s understand how effective API gateway security is if implemented in a proper manner. Let’s check it out.

Centralized Control

With API gateways, security controls can be easily centralized which makes it easier for organizations to implement policies of authorization, authentication, and rate limiting throughout all the APIs.

Access Management

API gateways have in-built features to manage and perform robust access controls like API keys, OAuth, and JWT (JSON Web Tokens). This only permits legitimate users to access APIs.

Traffic Monitoring

API gateways provide logging and monitoring capabilities that can help businesses detect and respond to abnormal activities or potential threats in real time.

Threat Protection

Many API gateways are inherently capable of tackling potential security threats like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and denial-of-service (DoS) through features such as input validation and request throttling.

Rate Limiting and Quotas

By implementing rate limiting and quotas, API gateways help mitigate the risk of abuse and overloading by controlling the amount of traffic an API can handle.

Six Types of API Gateways

Let’s learn about the types of API gateways and respective API gateway security features in detail.

Types of API Gateway

1. Cloud Based API Gateways

These are API gateways provided as a managed service by cloud providers (e.g., AWS API Gateway, Google Cloud Endpoints). It’s quite simple to deploy and scale them and integrate them with other cloud services and security features.

Security Features:

  • In-built DDoS protection.
  • Traffic encryption (HTTPS/TLS).
  • Proper authentication management.
  • Centralized access control and role-based access management.

2. On-premises API Gateways

API gateways are deployed and managed within an enterprise’s own infrastructure or data centers. On-premises APIs provide extra control over security and compliance, but, at the same time, they require regular maintenance and scalability considerations.

Security Features:

  • Customizable security policies and access controls.
  • Support for network segmentation and DMZ deployment
  • Integration with on-premises security infrastructure (firewalls, IDS/IPS).
  • Encryption key management and secure storage.
  • Audit logging and compliance reporting.

3. Open-source API Gateways

These API gateways are available under open-source licenses (e.g., Kong, Tyk, Express Gateway). They offer flexibility to personalization and integration, but they need more effort to be deployed and managed compared to cloud-based APIs.

Security Features:

  • Plugin architecture for custom authentication and authorization plugins.
  • Community-contributed security extensions (e.g., rate limiting, IP whitelisting).
  • Flexible deployment options (cloud, on-premises, hybrid).
  • Integration with security testing tools and vulnerability scanners

4. Microservices-focused API Gateways

These API gateways are specially created to manage communication between microservices within a microservices architecture.

Security Features:

  • Mutual TLS (mTLS) for service-to-service communication.
  • Dynamic service discovery and loading balancing.
  • Circuit breaker and fault tolerance mechanisms.
  • Distributed tracing and monitoring of microservices interactions.
  • Authentication and authorization based on service identities.

5. RESTful API Gateways

These API gateways are optimized for managing RESTful APIs. It’s like a collection of resources and methodologies that are integrated with backend HTTP endpoints, Lambda functions, or other AWS services.

Security Features:

6. Mobile Backend-as-a-Service (MBaaS) API Gateways

API gateways are specially designed for mobile applications that offer features like authentication, offline synchronization, and push notifications to mobile clients.

Security Features

  • Mobile-centric authentication methods (OAuth, Mobile SSO).
  • Secure offline storage and synchronization for mobile apps.
  • Geo-location-based access control and policies.
  • Mobile device management (MDM) integration for security policies.

Seven Defensive Security Measures for API Gateway Security

Here are API gateway security best practices for you to implement and eradicate potential API vulnerabilities at bay.

API Gateway Security Best Practices

1. Authentication and Authorization

Deploy robust authentication mechanisms like OAuth 2.0, JWT, or API keys to verify client identities. Also, fine-grained access control should be enforced on the basis of roles, permissions, and scopes to implement least privilege access control.

2. Rate Limiting and Throttling

Implement rate limiting and throttling policies to alleviate DoS attacks and avoid abuse of API resources. Moreover, regular monitoring and adjusting rate limits should be ensured in accordance with traffic patterns and usage.

3. Encryption

Optimize HTTPS/TLS encryption for data security while transmission between clients and the API gateway, as well as between the gateway and the backend services. Additionally, ensure proper configuration of TLS settings and uniform update certificates for vigorous API gateway protection.

4. API Gateway Configuration Security

Secure API gateway configuration by deactivating unrequired features and endpoints. Limit access to administrative interfaces and perform robust authentication mechanisms for administrative access.

5. API Gateway Hardening

Implement security patches, fixes, and updates on a regular basis to safeguard against potential vulnerabilities. Ensure that firewall rules and network segmentation are configured to limit access to APIs and backend services.

6. Logging and Monitoring

Carry out logging of API requests and responses, which includes metadata and user activity. Also, perform real-time monitoring and alerting for abnormal API behaviors.

7. Regular Security Audits

Conduct dynamic security testing with an advanced API vulnerability scanner to ensure there is no chance of vulnerabilities in APIs. By performing regular security audits, you can keep your APIs updated with the latest security measures and patches.

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Make Your APIs Vulnerability-Free with ZeroThreat

To ensure API security, you must create a robust API gateway; that’s when you are beginning with API security in the right direction. Following these security practices on a regular basis, along with other relevant precautions, makes it relatively easier to maintain a secure API.

Moreover, the tools you utilize to take care of security in API also matter a lot. Hence, using tools that provide accurate results at an astounding speed helps businesses assess advanced vulnerabilities in no time! Here comes ZeroThreat, which is a master of all these features with 0% need of configuration to offer 100% detailed results for your APIs and web apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the security concerns of API gateway?

Here are common types of security concerns of API gateway:

  • Authentication Issues
  • Authorization Flaws
  • Data Exposure
  • Injection Attacks
  • Denial-of-service (DoS) Attacks
  • Insufficient Logging and Monitoring
  • Security Misconfiguration

How to Protect API Gateway?

What is the main security policy in the API gateway?

What is the disadvantage of an API gateway?

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