It is important for organisations to develop sustainable APIs that are developed with up-to-date integration architectures and modern applications.
If APIs are not developed with a view of maintaining their relevance, stability and security throughout their lifetime, both the organisation themselves and consumers of their APIs may face long-term issues.
We have seen organisations who fall foul to this and face additional challenges such as introducing unwarranted cyber risk through security implementation mistakes, clashes with DevOps agility and project management burdens. These mistakes can also result in higher costs of development and a loss of revenue stemming from poor customer experience and potential contract termination.
Further, we often see inconsistent API documentation acting as a blocker or impeding factor to their continued development, often having a knock-on effect on overall API management, including security and access management. We continue to observe widespread development of inconsistent access controls in APIs by companies across major industries.
With a focus on minimising unwarranted cyber risk, it is important for you to apply security and access controls across your APIs in a consistent manner, followed by security testing.
Instead of sequentially developing your APIs in isolation, it is advised to adopt the DevOps notion of continuous improvement, where each cycle of API implementation and delivery results in continued refinement to the next cycle.
The inclusion of security and access controls in your DevSecOps capability, once introduced and implemented, should be continuously improved in alignment with this notion.