API Explosion Will Become a Top Security Priority, Gartner Predicts

Download their report for insight about API sprawl and ideas on effective mitigation

A new Gartner® report includes eye-opening analysis and predictions about API adoption, but this one jumped out: “By 2025, less than 50% of enterprise APIs will be managed, as explosive growth in APIs surpasses the capabilities of API management tools.”1

API sprawl is increasingly becoming a reality among software development teams, and the accompanying security concerns are top of mind for most software engineering leaders, the report concludes. The report is a thorough, insightful look at the overall API landscape and what it will take for software teams to secure their entire API inventory.

Key findings include:

  • “Organizations are adopting diverse types of APIs — internal APIs to represent coarse- and fine-grained service interfaces, data elements, and private and public APIs — at an expedited rate. Software engineering leaders are thus tasked with managing the explosion of both known and shadow APIs.
  • API security challenges have emerged as a top concern for most software engineering leaders, as unmanaged and unsecured APIs create vulnerabilities that could accelerate multimillion dollar security incidents.
  • While APIs have tremendously improved access to applications and services in software architectures, the use of third-party APIs introduces dependencies and failure risks, especially for mission-critical applications.”

Read the report for a full breakdown and ideas on how to secure your API inventory.

Checkmarx Application Security Testing software is used by more than 40 of the Fortune 100 and by government organizations around the world.

1 Gartner, Predicts 2022: APIs Demand Improved Security and Management, Shameen Pillai, Jeremy D’Hoinne et al., 6 December 2021.

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