Benefits Of API Access Management
Various businesses now benefit from the everyday use of APIs. Additionally, companies understand why proper API management is critical. So how can your business benefit from API access and ensure a high level of API security?
What is API access?
Firstly, what is API access? In short, API, which stands for Application Programming Interface, allows multiple software components to be able to “talk” to one another. A basic, everyday example is the weather app that is contained on your mobile phone.
In this situation, your weather app relies on the underlying weather company data, which is contained in their own computer systems. Using the API Access Management, the weather company’s data is then sent to your phone’s weather app. Other common everyday business applications that rely on an API being used in this way include online maps, high-traffic travel booking systems, and even more complex dedicated e-commerce systems.
This data traffic is normally communicated between systems using special API communication channels which are known as API endpoints. The majority of APIs rely on a special, highly flexible design known as Rest APIs. As can be seen from these examples, it is clear that APIs are crucial for a range of important business functions.
Given their flexibility and importance, ensuring that your business has a high level of API security should make good business sense.
Why is it important to protect our APIs?
Given the highly-sensitive nature of data in today’s business world, a situation in which the loss of important data occurs could result in a range of significant reputational or financial losses to your business.
An even more serious situation that could be caused by having a poor level of API security is a situation in which your data is obtained by a competitor. This could occur if a competitor obtains, for example, an employee’s authorization key. Fortunately, high-quality and cost-effective API management solutions are now available.
These bespoke systems simplify the process of ensuring that only the correct users can access your API data, whilst maintaining a high level of security. In today’s business world, effective access management simply makes sense. Securing your API gateway will mean that your data is kept secure and will not fall into the hands of your competitors.
Investing in a high-quality API management system should be an easy decision. Let’s look at an example of how a secure API manager could work in practice below.
How do API access management systems work?
One example is the OKTA API access management system. This comprehensive system is a bespoke API management platform. It relies on a rigorous access control system to ensure that only authorized users are allowed to have access to API systems.
This is done by a dedicated API access control authorization server process, which ensures that only the correct users have an access token or API key. This system can be used in a variety of situations. For example, this system can be used to control API access for employees, vendors, or customers of your business.
Alternatively, the OpenID Connect system can be used to ensure a high level of security when users sign in to their account hosted by your custom business web application. The OKTA access gateway features a comprehensive range of technical features, including a reverse proxy, which is designed to keep web applications secure.
Other benefits include OKTA’s ability to seamlessly integrate with the SecureAuth identity platform, or other external identity providers. The core OKTA API can even be used in a backend API configuration. Finally, the dedicated OKTA developer portal can be used to deploy authorization to protect your APIs, apps, infrastructure, and data.
For example, access tokens can be used to ensure that only the right users have access to your important API data. Another key aspect of these systems is that they can be easily adapted to today’s fast-changing business needs. In particular, they are easily scalable and can be configured based on the size of your business.
For example, even in a situation where your business might have hundreds of users, who all require API keys, this can still be accommodated.
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