Why API Discovery is Essential for Your Organization's Cloud Security

APIs are an indispensable component of any organization’s cloud infrastructure. However, ensuring the security of APIs is critical and begins with gaining comprehensive visibility into their location, functionality, and performance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Why API Discovery is Essential for Your Organization’s Cloud Security

01 Today’s Risks with Insecure APIs

02 Visibility Is the Key to API Security

03 Auto-generated API Schema

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Dashboards & Visibility

06 08 Cloud-Native Security That’s Prevention-First with Check Point on AWS

09 Unified, Prevention-First Cloud Security Platform

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Shadow APIs: Discover the Unknown The rapid pace of API development often leads to the creation of unmanaged or undocumented APIs, commonly referred to as “Shadow APIs.” These APIs operate outside the purview of security teams, creating hidden vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. Their existence is frequently the result of rapid updates, third-party integrations, or legacy systems, making continuous discovery and monitoring essential to prevent breaches.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) allow software applications to talk to each other. These calls form a critical portion of the Internet but are commonly underdefended, making them a target for cyber threats. Creating a robust security posture begins with understanding how APIs can be vulnerable.

WHY API DISCOVERY IS ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION’S CLOUD SECURITY 31%

34% 400%

Of all malicious requests target shadow APIs

Y/Y increase in attacks on cloud- based networks

Increase in API attacks in the first half of 2023

Sensitive Data Detection: Risk of Data Misplacement Publicly exposed APIs are highly susceptible to attacks, especially when managing large applications with a significant number of APIs. Such scenarios are prone to public exposure misconfigurations, such as unintentionally configuring an internal API (i.e., internal management portal) as public-facing. Understanding which endpoints are vulnerable can significantly reduce the potential risks associated with such exposures.

Public Exposure: Misconfiguration Risks Publicly accessible APIs pose a significant security risk, especially in large applications with numerous endpoints. Misconfigurations, such as accidentally exposing internal APIs (e.g., admin portals) to the public, can expand the attack surface. Identifying and securing these exposed APIs is critical to reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data leakage.

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TODAY’S RISKS WITH INSECURE APIs

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API Zero-Day Exploits Cause Serious Damage to Unprotected Businesses One of the biggest risks of having unsecured APIs running in your cloud is unauthorized access to large amounts of sensitive data.

HOW YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN BE AFFECTED BY INSECURE APIs

The reliance on APIs makes them a popular target for attackers. The result is insecure APIs that cost businesses an estimated $130 billion annually.

A well-known example is the January 2022 X breach, which exposed the data of 5.4 million users from an API vulnerability. Furthermore, in December 2022, the attacker sold 400 million X profiles on the dark web.

Data Breaches APIs connect external applications and users with your internal apps, making them a possible route to sensitive data.

1 Business Impacts Security breaches can result in litigation, fines, and direct financial damage. A single data leak can also irreparably damage your brand.

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Service Disruptions If an API is not maintained correctly, it might be easily compromised or unable to handle legitimate requests, which could cause considerable service outages.

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In July 2023, a significant cyber security incident involving Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) was reported. The attackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability, which allowed unauthorized access to API endpoints. This vulnerability impacted, on average, 1 in every 31 organizations worldwide weekly during 2023 (after it was disclosed).

VISIBILITY IS THE KEY TO API SECURITY Discover your APIs and metadata

Check Point WAF delivers a robust and automated solution for discovering, monitoring, and securing APIs across your entire API landscape. Unifying application security (WAF) and API security into one seamless system leverages advanced machine learning to provide continuous insights into API usage, detect vulnerabilities, enforce controls, and safeguard sensitive data – all without sending sensitive information outside your environment.

API Discovery: Comprehensive and Continuous Monitoring The integrated WAF agent collects every API request in real time, ensuring no endpoint is overlooked. It learns only from legitimate requests classified as safe by the security engine and with HTTP status codes between 200 and 400. This approach ensures the learning model is based on valid API interactions, reducing false positives. Collected data is aggregated in the cloud every 30 minutes, where advanced machine learning algorithms cluster millions of unique URIs to their corresponding APIs. This process maps out the entire API ecosystem, facilitating accurate identification and monitoring of all API endpoints.

Sensitive Data Detection: Inline Analysis with Privacy Preservation Sensitive data detection is performed inline within your environment. The security agent inspects API requests and responses for sensitive data patterns using regex and function-based matching. To address customers compliance requirements, only metadata - such as parameter names, data types (string, integer, boolean), length, and sensitive data categories is logged. Actual data values remain within your premises, ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR, ISO27001, and IPDPA.

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Check Point WAF provides extensive & automated discovery, control, and protection for APIs based on machine learning to effectively monitor and protect your entire API landscape.

Public API Misconfiguration Detection

The system detects APIs accessed from public IP addresses, identifying internal APIs that may have been unintentionally exposed due to misconfigurations. Monitoring source IP addresses helps secure APIs that should not be publicly accessible, reducing the attack surface and preventing unauthorized access.

API Management-Detailed Classification and Shadow API Detection

APIs are classified into four categories to streamline management:

New (Shadow APIs): Newly discovered, undocumented APIs.

Changed: APIs with deviations from the expected schema.

Deleted: Previously known APIs are no longer active in traffic.

Existing: APIs that match the current schema.

This classification aids in identifying shadow and deprecated APIs, enabling effective management of the API inventory and reducing vulnerabilities associated with unmanaged or outdated endpoints.

GraphQL Support:

Check Point WAF fully supports GraphQL APIs, ensuring consistent visibility, analysis, and protection across different API architectures used within your environment.

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AUTO-GENERATED API SCHEMA IN-APP SCREENSHOT

Provides Full Visibility And Strict Enforcement

Our system provides auto-generated API schemas that offer significant benefits in terms of visibility, developer efficiency, and security.

Deep Visibility into APIs By automatically generating comprehensive schemas for each API – including methods, URI parameters, and request body structures – we offer deep visibility into your API ecosystem. This extends beyond basic endpoint and method identification, allowing you to understand the exact parameters and data structures used in API requests. Such granular insight enables a thorough understanding of API behaviors and data flows within your applications.

Developer Efficiency and Time Savings The auto-generated schemas serve as a valuable baseline for developers, significantly reducing the manual effort required to create and maintain API documentation. This automation saves time and minimizes the potential for errors associated with manual schema writing. Developers can focus on core development tasks instead of spending hours on schema creation, especially in environments where APIs frequently change.

Precise Malicious Change Detection By analyzing API parameters and request body structures in detail, our system can detect even the slightest changes or anomalies in API behavior. This precise monitoring enables the early detection of unauthorized modifications, such as unexpected parameters or altered data structures introduced by malicious actors. Early identification of such changes is critical for maintaining security and allows for swift response to potential threats.

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DASHBOARDS & VISIBILITY Provides Full Visibility And Strict Enforcement

Unified Cross-Asset API Dashboard Check Point WAF provides a unified view of API activity across all assets in an organization’s environment. This centralized platform consolidates data from multiple applications, services, and environments, offering security teams comprehensive visibility into API traffic, usage patterns, and potential risks. The dashboard presents key metrics and insights, such as API status, sensitive data exposure, and public accessibility, in an intuitive and easily navigable interface. By offering a holistic perspective, Check Point WAF empowers organizations to monitor their entire API landscape, streamline incident response, and enforce security policies consistently across diverse assets.

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Comprehensive Revision History for API Monitoring Our system maintains time-stamped snapshots of your APIs and associated sensitive data, capturing the state of your API landscape at each moment. This allows you to detect even minor drifts or unauthorized changes – such as a logging API unexpectedly receiving credit card information. By comparing revisions over time, you gain critical insights to quickly identify and address deviations from expected behavior. Especially for incident response, this historical data proves invaluable for analyzing and resolving security issues promptly.

Advanced Schema Validation for Real-Time API Security Our in-house development of both Web Application Firewall (WAF) and API security ensures seamless integration between application and API security features. This tight coupling enables streamlined enforcement of security policies. For customers managing their own schemas, we offer APIs to integrate directly into their CI/CD pipelines. This allows schema updates to be automatically uploaded to the WAF as part of the CI/CD cycle. By combining schema validation enforcement with API discovery, we empower CISOs to regain control—enforcing restrictions on unsafe APIs before they reach production.

Auto-generated schemas can be easily imported into the schema validation engine. Once enabled, the system enforces the expected structure of API requests in real time, blocking any requests that deviate from the schema, including those targeting new or undocumented shadow APIs.

This approach not only enhances visibility but also delivers powerful, real-time security. By turning detailed insights into actionable protection, our solution eliminates the need for third-party tools. The deep integration ensures consistent policy enforcement and swift responses to emerging threats.

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CLOUD-NATIVE SECURITY THAT’S PREVENTION-FIRST WITH CHECK POINT ON AWS Remove API security obstacles with a solution that works seamlessly with your AWS environment. Using Check Point, you can automate your application security, generative and agentic AI, and API protection with Check Point WAF and Check Point WAF as a Service.

Check Point has dozens of AWS integrations, meaning your AWS deployments are protected. By combining Check Point with your AWS infrastructure, you can take advantage of the cloud’s productivity and scalability benefits without compromising on security.

"Our evaluation shows that Check Point delivers precise, reliable protection against sophisticated automated attacks, zero-day exploits and emerging API threats. Check Point WAF performs exceptionally well in high security environments where accuracy is critical and false positives must remain low, while still preserving the performance and availability that digital businesses depend on.”

—Kirk Ryan, Analyst, GigaOm

Check Point named leader in GIGAOM 2026 Radar Report for application and API security for 3 years in a row

GIGAOM REPORT: CHECK POINT IS LEADER AND FAST MOVER IN WEB APPLICATION & API SECURITY

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UNIFIED, PREVENTION-FIRST CLOUD SECURITY PLATFORM Check Point Software Technologies (www.checkpoint.com) is a global leader in cyber security solutions, dedicated to protecting corporate enterprises and governments worldwide.

For over 30 years, our mission has been to secure the digital world for everyone, everywhere. From pioneering stateful firewalls to our AI-powered, cloud-delivered security solutions, we are committed to safeguarding organizations with an industry-leading 99.9% prevention rate.

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