Security is probably the number-one question on most people's minds as they move to make their APIs and API products available externally. They’re worried because criminals are getting smarter and their attacks more sophisticated.
"If I take this step to try to drive adoption and put these APIs outside of my organizational boundary, how do I ensure that they're safe?"
To be clear, there is no such thing as a completely safe, secure way. What organizations can do is take steps to reduce that exposure, and an API marketplace can be extremely helpful in that process. Having one approved place to go for all API products gives you the opportunity to enforce security standards as a part of the product definition process.
Instead of every development team and every business silo trying to create their own ways of dealing with security, organizations can now require them to create APIs according to a defined standard. They will still need to design security features into the APIs and API products, but they also go through a validation process before being exposed in the marketplace.
Instead of saying, "Go here for this particular department or here for this business silo," you can send people to one place, which allows you to concentrate security measures, testing, and validation in one place instead of all over the business.
A second key area is a true universal API platform, which is the underlying foundation for Amplify Enterprise Marketplace. It supports automated discovery of all the unmanaged APIs that you may have in your organization.
The real problem isn’t the APIs that you know about and are focusing on for security. The real problem is the ones that you don't know about, the ones that have escaped, the ones that someone just put up to meet a deadline and then forgot… except for the cybercriminal who has discovered them.
Universal API management can connect to your existing repositories, your existing vendors’ gateways, and discover all of those API artifacts, even if they haven't been secured, and then allow you to go through a vetting process before you put them in the public marketplace.
The final point that can be very helpful with security is that an enterprise marketplace will support multiple directories, organizations, teams, and roles for permissions. It allows you to layer security and apply a defense in depth based on who's coming in, so you can start to implement some of the Zero Trust principles that will help ensure greater security.
Want to know more? Watch this 30-minute demo to learn how to get the most out of your APIs with a custom, turnkey enterprise API marketplace.
