Monetary providers API and net software assaults improve by 257%

Managing the assault floor is without doubt one of the most tough challenges going through fashionable safety groups. In at this time’s hybrid and multi cloud environments, each single app and API is a possible goal that cybercriminals can and can exploit.  

At the moment, CDN supplier Akamai Applied sciences, Inc. launched a brand new report revealing a 257% development in net software and API assaults on monetary service establishments year-over-year.

The identical report additionally discovered that DDoS assaults on monetary providers establishments elevated by 22 p.c yr over yr and located that risk actors are utilizing methods of their phishing campaigns to bypass two-factor authentication options. 

Whereas the findings pertain to monetary service establishments, the report has broader implications for enterprises and highlights that net apps and APIs are a core goal for cybercriminals sooner or later. 

API assaults and the rising assault floor

Akamai isn’t the one vendor to have picked up on the rising development of API assaults. Analysis launched by Noname Safety discovered that 41% of organizations had an API safety incident within the final 12 months, 63% involving a knowledge breach or information loss.

One of many foremost causes for the excessive quantity of API exploitation focusing on enterprises and monetary service establishments, is that there’s a huge assault floor of net functions and APIs that almost all safety groups don’t have the assets or experience to guard. 

“Firms have moved key infrastructure over to APIS, so the criminals are following the income. However on prime of that, APIs are newer and, in lots of circumstances, don’t have the identical degree of maturity in safety processes and controls, so are extra weak,” mentioned Advisory CISO at Akamai, Steve Winterfield. 

“Lastly, they’re simpler to automate assaults towards as they’re designed for automation. These elements mix to make APIs a wise place for attackers to focus. That is additionally why CISOs must concentrate on them,” Winterfield mentioned. 

Working towards API safety

There are a selection of steps that enterprises can take to extend their resilience towards API-driven threats. 

At a high-level, Gartner recommends that organizations spend money on applied sciences to mechanically uncover, catalog and validate APIs, whereas growing a safety technique that includes API safety testing and API entry management. 

Rising transparency over what inside and third-party APIs are used ensures that enterprises are ready to begin mitigating potential vulnerabilities throughout the assault floor. 

As well as, Winterfield recommends enterprises evaluate their threat fashions to find out if they’ve acceptable fraud and buyer threats categorized based mostly on this new information, whereas updating phishing defenses to counter the most recent MFA assaults with FIDO2-compliant capabilities. 

Extra broadly, implementing business finest practices and processes equivalent to Cyber Kill Chain and NIST’s 800-207 Zero Belief Structure may help present higher cyber resilience towards the most recent threats.