In today’s cloud-first world, your APIs aren’t just powering innovation, they’re exposing your organization to attacks.
Not long ago, enterprise security was defined by the strength of its perimeter: hardened networks, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and locked-down endpoints. The model was simple—keep threats outside and allow trusted internal operations to flow without interruption. That “castle-and-moat” philosophy worked when operations were centralized. But in today’s cloud-first, mobile, hyperconnected world, the perimeter has shifted. Your Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are now the new enterprise boundary—and one of the fastest-growing attack surfaces.
As traditional defenses matured, adversaries adapted. Instead of battering firewalls, they target the seams of digital ecosystems: stolen credentials, misconfigured cloud services, mobile endpoints, and especially the APIs silently binding everything together. Too often, APIs are deployed rapidly, inconsistently governed, and insufficiently monitored, making them a prime entry point for attackers .
APIs are the circulatory system of modern business and government. They power mobile applications, enable partner integrations, move sensitive data across cloud and on-prem environments, and drive citizen services. But ubiquity brings risk:
In the era of Zero Trust, unsecured APIs are equivalent to leaving sensitive applications open to the public internet without controls. The question is no longer whether attackers will test your APIs: it’s whether your organization has the visibility and protection in place to stop them WHEN the attacks begin.
The data is clear: API exploitation is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Akamai’s 2025 API Security Report found that 84% of organizations experienced an API-related incident, up from 78% in 2023.
Research from Salt Labs found that 99% of enterprises faced API security issues, with more than half suffering a breach. Even more concerning, Salt Labs research shows that 95% of these attacks used authenticated sessions—attackers weren’t brute-forcing from the outside; they were using stolen or misused credentials to impersonate trusted users.
Meanwhile, the Traceable AI 2025 Global API Security Report found that only 21% believe they can detect API attacks, and just 13% say they can prevent more than half of them.
These numbers are staggering, given the diverse attack vectors and repeatable nature of these attacks:
Industry experts warn: API-based attacks are on track to surpass traditional web exploits as the #1 cause of enterprise breaches. With adversaries increasingly automating reconnaissance and exploitation, APIs are both the backbone of digital innovation and the most attractive modern attack surface.
Generative AI and automation are amplifying these risks. Attackers now use AI to:
What once took weeks of manual effort can now be executed in hours. Without robust API security, organizations are ceding speed and scale advantages to adversaries.
Private enterprises risk financial loss, reputational harm, and regulatory penalties. For U.S. federal government agencies and the Department of Defense (DoD), the stakes are higher. APIs drive tax systems, healthcare portals, defense logistics, and mission data flows. A compromise here risks more than data—it can erode public trust, disrupt essential services, or even jeopardize national security.
Federal agencies and the DoD are particularly reliant on APIs to support mission-critical operations. These APIs enable inter-agency collaboration, contractor integrations, and cloud-first initiatives, but they also create significant exposure:
Nation-state actors and criminal groups alike recognize the immense payoff of breaching a federal or DoD API: unauthorized access to mission data, classified communications, or sensitive citizen records.
Effective API defense requires layered protection across the entire lifecycle—from development to production. This is where OpenText Application Security Testing and OpenText Secure API Manager deliver end-to-end resilience by working together to identify and shut down vulnerabilities that attackers, increasingly aided by AI, are exploiting.
OpenText Application Security Testing integrates into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to uncover API vulnerabilities like BOLA, injection flaws, and weak authentication before deployment. With static application security testing (SAST) and dynamic application security testing (DAST), the system analyzes both source code and runtime behavior to pinpoint weaknesses in authentication logic, data exposure, and access controls. This “shift-left” approach dramatically reduces exploitable attack surfaces—especially against AI-driven scanning.
Once APIs are deployed, runtime protection becomes critical. OpenText Secure API Manager protects live environments with:
Aligned with Zero Trust mandates and identity standards (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect), Secure API Manager ensures every API call is authenticated, authorized, and inspected. This not only ensures compliance, but delivers the desired protection, visibility, governance, and outcomes for department applications and workloads.
Where OpenText Application Security Testing removes vulnerabilities during development, Secure API Manager continuously monitors and blocks threats in production. This closed-loop defense approach ensures APIs are not only secure by design, but resilient in the face of evolving AI-powered attack strategies.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a reminder that protecting our organizations requires more than patching endpoints or training against phishing. APIs are now the unseen perimeter—spanning enterprises, powering citizen services, and underpinning defense operations. Left unchecked, they are the back doors attackers are counting on.
By combining an agile, secure-by-design SDLC with continuous monitoring and policy enforcement, organizations can shut down these API security gaps before they are exploited and achieve desired Zero Trust outcomes in the process. For the federal government and DoD, it means safeguarding missions, citizens, and national security.
Learn more about protecting APIs with OpenText Application Security Testing (formerly OpenText Fortify) and OpenText Secure API Manager (formerly OpenText NetIQ):
MFGS, Inc. is the trusted advisor to the U.S. Government, its partners, and system integrators for achieving optimal efficiency throughout an agency’s enterprise software architecture. We bring a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise-grade software capabilities and a deep understanding of how DOD agencies operate to support your entire software development lifecycle, enabling you to securely plan, build, deliver, and run agency missions.
Article written by Jeremy Kelly, an external cybersecurity professional.