Companies in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly relying on AI/ML- enabled solutions to tackle a wide array of security challenges around application programming interfaces (APIs), according to a new report from F5.
To evaluate the current landscape of API security in APAC, Twimbit conducted research on behalf of F5 in the first semester of 2024, surveying 297 professionals from various sectors, including security, DevOps, SecOps, and application development.
Respondents were distributed across 11 markets, including Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.
Results show that with APIs increasingly being the point of attack for cybercriminals, one in five APAC organisations have adopted artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to detect and mitigate sophisticated threats — such as server-side request forgery (SSRF) — that may be overlooked by traditional security measures.
API Gateways (20%) are also widely adopted by organisations across the region for strong access control and to mitigate a broad spectrum of vulnerabilities such as unrestricted access to sensitive business flows.
Mohan Veloo, F5 CTO for APAC, China and Japan, said that applications have become the front door to cybercrime, and cybercriminals increasingly use APIs as the key.
“Across the APAC region, we have seen more attacks, with increasing speed, scale and sophistication as cybercriminals leverage AI-powered tools,” he said. “As such, protecting API connections and the data that runs through them has become the critical security challenge for APAC organisations, especially with many looking to deliver AI.”
Having robust code security standards and practices (18%) has emerged as a fundamental strategy among the region’s organisations to guard APIs against a broad range of complex vulnerabilities, from Broken Object Level Authorization and Security Misconfiguration issues to SSRF.
Findings also show that APAC faces unique API security challenges compared to the rest of the world.
Security challenge rankings by APAC organizations diverge from global OWASP rankings, with Broken Authentication, Server-Side Request Forgery, and Security Misconfiguration emerging as top concerns. This is driven by widely used REST/RPC technologies, high use of internal APIs and diverse deployments across the region.
Also, security testing and access control are top priorities in the API security lifecycle for APAC organisations. This emphasis underscores the importance of preventative measures to mitigate risks associated with unauthorised access and ensure robust API security before deployment.
APAC organisations took a balanced approach towards runtime protection and discovery, with posture management ranking lowest in priority.
Further, APAC is maturing in its approach to API security testing. Organisations are balancing traditional methods like Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (54%) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (51%) with emerging strategies such as Active API Security Testing (51%). This reflects an industry-wide recognition of the importance of diverse testing strategies.
In addition, controlling external users is the top concern in API access control. APAC organisations cited heightened concern over potential risks from external entities (59%). Other priorities include compliance with established standards (54%) and secure app-to-app interactions (49%).
This reflects trends toward increasing connectivity and highlights the importance of comprehensive security frameworks to address evolving API risks effectively.
