API Security Best Practices
API security best practices for authentication, object authorization, input validation, webhooks, abuse controls, monitoring, and continuous testing.
Read guideWeb Security
API security guides
Authentication, authorization, validation, monitoring, and abuse controls for APIs.
What these guides cover
API security protects an interface throughout design, implementation, deployment, operation, and retirement. The strongest baseline does not depend on one gateway or scanner: it inventories every exposed API, authenticates callers, authorizes the exact object and function, validates all inputs and downstream destinations, limits costly operations, minimizes returned data, and records enforcement decisions. These controls must account for valid-looking abuse as well as malformed attacks. Checks close to application logic are essential when policy depends on tenant ownership, workflow state, resource sensitivity, or the business meaning of an operation. Failure behavior must be explicit so a security dependency outage does not silently grant access.
Risks
- Unknown, deprecated, or inconsistently protected APIs
- Broken object and function-level authorization
- Injection, SSRF, replay, and unsafe downstream calls
- Data exposure, resource exhaustion, and weak telemetry
Control priorities
- API inventory, ownership, and retirement policy
- Credential validation and deny-by-default authorization
- Schema, destination, signature, and replay validation
- Resource limits, monitoring, and negative security tests
Recommended reading order
Work through the API security guide from inventory and identity to authorization, validation, abuse controls, data exposure, monitoring, and continuous testing. Use its checklist as both a design review and a regression-test plan.
Guides in this collection
How enterprises secure APIs against abuse and bots
How enterprises secure APIs against abuse and bots: identity-aware rate limits and bot detection on the operation, plus an honest split between edge platforms and in-app SDKs.
Read guideHow do you secure a Node.js/Express API?
Secure a Node.js Express API with Arcjet protect() middleware: Shield, detectBot allow or deny lists, and a production rate limit on each request.
Read guideHow do you secure a GraphQL API?
Secure a GraphQL API: disable introspection, cap query cost and depth, authorize every resolver, and add Arcjet plus GraphQL Armor on Apollo Server 5.
Read guideHow do you add rate limits and bot detection to a GraphQL API?
Add token-bucket rate limits and bot detection to a GraphQL API on Yoga and Next.js, then serve only SHA-256 persisted operations.
Read guideHow do you secure serverless and edge apps?
Secure serverless and edge apps by enforcing identity-aware limits and bot policy inside each handler on Lambda, Vercel, and Cloudflare Workers.
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