A historical perspective on API security risks

APIs have played an important part in the digital world since their introduction. Like other technologies, APIs have undergone continual evolution in response to changing needs and technology environments. As a result, the history of API security has been one of adapting to the changing threats and challenges posed by this evolution.

The early days of APIs

APIs were initially conceived as tools to enable different software components to communicate within the same system, offering a standardized way of linking different parts of the software. This was evident in early UNIX systems where APIs such as “write” and “read” allowed communication between different parts of the system.

APIs were mainly utilized internally in the early days, with applications operating on centralized servers. As a result, security concerns were primarily focused on securing the system as a whole, rather than the individual APIs...