Secure APIs and Integrations
How to protect connections between systems and third parties
APIs are the doors through which different systems and third-party applications communicate with a company's platform, and each new integration is, in practice, an additional point that can be exploited if it isn't properly protected with strong authentication, usage limits and strict validation of the data coming in and going out. For the product area this matters because every time an integration with a business partner or external app is enabled, part of the system's security is being entrusted to decisions that company made outside the team's direct control. A frequent case is exposing more information than necessary in an API response, for example returning a user's complete record when the external application only needed to confirm whether an account exists, leaving sensitive data exposed without anyone noticing until it's too late.