What is Imperva API Security and why is it necessary?

APIs are essential for modern applications, enabling data exchange between services. However, if not properly secured, APIs can be vulnerable to attacks, data breaches, and manipulation of business logic. API security protects against these risks, ensuring data integrity, safeguarding user information, and maintaining seamless service availability for businesses and customers. Find out more .

What are the deployment options for Imperva API Security?

Imperva API Security offers flexible deployment options, including an API Security Add-On for Imperva Cloud WAF users, Cloud-Managed API Security through the Imperva Cloud WAF console and Self-Managed API Security via a local management console. This ensures seamless integration in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.

What is business logic abuse?

Business logic abuse occurs when attackers manipulate the legitimate functionality of an API to achieve malicious goals, such as bypassing security controls or exploiting flaws in the application’s logic.

How does Imperva prevent business logic abuse?

Imperva API Security continuously discovers, classifies, and assesses all APIs, focusing on vulnerabilities like Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA). It integrates seamlessly with advanced bot protection to safeguard sensitive APIs from abuse.

How does Imperva API Security keep my API inventory updated?

Imperva API Security automatically discovers and classifies all APIs within your environment, including undocumented and shadow APIs, ensuring your API inventory remains current and secure against evolving threats.

What are the classification categories of Imperva API Security?

Imperva API Security classifies APIs based on sensitivity, including categories such as government ID, credit card details, address information, and other personally identifiable information (PII). This classification helps organizations prioritize security measures to protect the most sensitive APIs effectively.

Is Imperva API Security alone enough to protect my APIs?

API Security is a critical component of protecting your APIs, but it should be part of a holistic approach to safeguarding your entire application ecosystem. A comprehensive protection strategy includes: Web Application Firewall (WAF) to defend against common web exploits. DDoS Protection to mitigate large-scale attacks. Advanced Bot Protection to prevent automated threats. By integrating these solutions, you ensure robust security that effectively protects not just your APIs, but your entire application environment.

API Security and Protection | Safeguard All Your APIs

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Comprehensive protection for all your APIs

Imperva API Security protects your APIs from attacks and vulnerabilities, ensuring security across environments. Safeguard all APIs from API attacks and business logic abuse.

Discover and mitigate vulnerable APIs

Imperva provides continuous discovery of all public, private, and shadow APIs, ensuring no gaps in your API landscape. By thoroughly classifying and assessing risk, we protect your entire API inventory and mitigate vulnerabilities, safeguarding even the most hidden and vulnerable endpoints from potential threats.

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Secure APIs anywhere

Protect your APIs wherever they're deployed—whether behind a cloud WAF, on-premise, in hybrid environments, or across east-west and north-south traffic. Imperva API Security ensures robust protection for your APIs, no matter the setup or location of your applications.

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Extend protection through integration

Seamlessly integrating with your WAF, Imperva extends protection beyond APIs to your entire application architecture. This unified approach delivers comprehensive, layered security that’s unmatched in the industry.

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The KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: API Security and Management

Imperva has been named an Overall leader and a leader in the Product, Innovation and Market categories in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: API Security and Management. The report highlights that for a comprehensive API management and security architecture, a hybrid deployment model is the only flexible and future-proof option.

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How API Security works

Continuous API discovery and classification

Once activated, Imperva API Security continuously discovers and monitors APIs across environments, including shadow APIs. It tracks changes, detects design flaws, and identifies vulnerabilities to prevent API attacks.

API risk assessment

Imperva API Security conducts ongoing risk assessments to identify design flaws and vulnerabilities associated with the OWASP API Security Top 10. This capability empowers organizations to proactively detect and remediate security gaps, ensuring robust protection for their APIs and minimizing potential risks.

Integration to mitigate bot attacks

Imperva API Security and Advanced Bot Protection work together to safeguard APIs from automated threats. They provide visibility into sensitive APIs, detect bot attacks, and mitigate risks through tailored Imperva Advanced Bot Protection policies, ensuring robust protection for your business logic against abuse from automated threats.

Flexible API Security management and deployment options

Imperva API Security offers flexible management options for diverse environments. Choose cloud-managed for external cloud integration or self-managed for full control without integration with external cloud services. Deployment options include agent-based or agentless setups, supporting cloud WAF, microservices, encrypted applications, and network-layer monitoring, ensuring comprehensive protection for all API traffic across any architecture.

Enhanced security through seamless integrations

Imperva API Security integrates seamlessly with industry-leading tools like Kong, Mulesoft, Azure APIM, Apigee, and F5, simplifying deployment and management. It ensures thorough API traffic inspection across all environments while enhancing flexibility and control through API gateways, proxies, and load balancers, supporting both encrypted applications and microservices.

What is API Security

Imperva API Security provides continuous protection of all APIs using deep discovery and classification to detect all public, private and shadow APIs. It also protects against business logic attacks and many more of the OWASP API Top Ten threats. The easy-to-deploy solution empowers security teams to implement a positive API security model.

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Having API security, I think from my perspective, is a safety blanket in a way. To know, oh yeah, if something does come up, we have an alert for it—we’ll deal with it.

Lindbergh Caldeira Head of Cybersecurity Operations Full customer story

With enhanced API security, our customers feel more confident about using hibank’s digital services. We’ve reduced the likelihood of downtime due to security breaches, which has led to increased customer satisfaction and trust in our digital banking platform.

Lim Siaw Liang CISO, hibank Full customer story

API Security FAQs

What is Imperva API Security and why is it necessary?

APIs are essential for modern applications, enabling data exchange between services. However, if not properly secured, APIs can be vulnerable to attacks, data breaches, and manipulation of business logic. API security protects against these risks, ensuring data integrity, safeguarding user information, and maintaining seamless service availability for businesses and customers. Find out more.
What are the deployment options for Imperva API Security?

Imperva API Security offers flexible deployment options, including an API Security Add-On for Imperva Cloud WAF users, Cloud-Managed API Security through the Imperva Cloud WAF console and Self-Managed API Security via a local management console. This ensures seamless integration in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.
What is business logic abuse?

Business logic abuse occurs when attackers manipulate the legitimate functionality of an API to achieve malicious goals, such as bypassing security controls or exploiting flaws in the application’s logic.
How does Imperva prevent business logic abuse?

Imperva API Security continuously discovers, classifies, and assesses all APIs, focusing on vulnerabilities like Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA). It integrates seamlessly with advanced bot protection to safeguard sensitive APIs from abuse.
How does Imperva API Security keep my API inventory updated?

Imperva API Security automatically discovers and classifies all APIs within your environment, including undocumented and shadow APIs, ensuring your API inventory remains current and secure against evolving threats.
What are the classification categories of Imperva API Security?

Imperva API Security classifies APIs based on sensitivity, including categories such as government ID, credit card details, address information, and other personally identifiable information (PII). This classification helps organizations prioritize security measures to protect the most sensitive APIs effectively.
Is Imperva API Security alone enough to protect my APIs?
API Security is a critical component of protecting your APIs, but it should be part of a holistic approach to safeguarding your entire application ecosystem. A comprehensive protection strategy includes:
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) to defend against common web exploits.
- DDoS Protection to mitigate large-scale attacks.
- Advanced Bot Protection to prevent automated threats.
By integrating these solutions, you ensure robust security that effectively protects not just your APIs, but your entire application environment.