5 Best Practices for Securing Modern Web Applications and APIs
Web applications are nothing new. Neither is web application security. Many businesses have been building and securing web-based applications for more than a decade. Yet, over the past several years, the nature of web applications has changed fundamentally. Monolithic applications hosted by individual web servers have been replaced by containerized, cloud native applications that are distributed across a cluster of host servers. According to O’Reilly, more than three-quarters of businesses have now pivoted to microservices as the go-to means of designing applications. Microservice architectures not only introduce additional security complexities but also, since they require orchestrators like Kubernetes®, lead to larger tech stacks, which increases the attack surface.
At the same time, APIs—which have also existed for decades but have never been as central to applications as they are today—have become increasingly critical for connecting web applications to external resources, as well as for managing internal communication. The average application now depends on between 10 and 15 individual APIs, TechCrunch reports. APIs also expand the attack surface of web applications and increase security challenges surrounding authentication, authorization, and data privacy.
Widespread adoption of public clouds for hosting web applications has also introduced significant new security challenges. In an age when 94% of enterprises are using public cloud, neatly segmenting applications behind firewalls simply doesn’t work any longer. Today’s developers and security teams must contend with “perimeter-less” networks, where applications are continuously exposed to internet-borne threats.
True, some parts of some web applications can still be protected by firewalls, for example, microservices that don’t communicate externally can typically be placed behind a firewall. However, in cases where microservices need to upload or download data from an object storage bucket hosted in a public cloud or interact with a third-party authorization API to log in users, traffic can’t be kept within the boundaries of an internal network.
The guide to your security
Secure IT Consult is proud to share this eBook on best practices for Web Application Security and API protection utilising best-in-class solutions courtesy of Palo Alto Networks. With Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Cloud Web Application and Security, an integrated part of Palo Alto Networks Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), you could see a measured improvement in security, and peace of mind.
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Security teams’ jobs would be easier if we still lived in the world of simple monolithic web applications, but that world is gone. The complexity of today’s cloud native, API-centric web applications, as well as the microservices they leverage, is a world full of new security challenges. This new world requires new security strategies and solutions to complement conventional approaches to security. These new practices and tools must enable scalable, flexible, multi-layered security that works for any type of workload in any type of environment or cloud architecture.
Prisma® Cloud Web Application and API Security is integrated into the Palo Alto Networks Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) and provides a modern approach to web application and API security. This module is the industry’s only integrated solution to provide comprehensive detection and protection of web applications and APIs for any cloud native architecture. Security, IT, and DevOps teams can confidently leverage best-in-class protection for all their web applications and APIs, seamlessly integrated into their CI/CD pipeline.
You can learn more about Prisma Cloud Web Application and API Security from our team, and in our documentation, and see Prisma Cloud in action by
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