Topic starter
02/08/2026 9:41 am
TL;DR: API security issues hit 99% of organisations in the past 12 months, and 55% delayed releases because of them, according to StackHawk. Continuous API security testing is now a development control, not a post-release safeguard, because broken authentication and authorization failures are exploitable before teams notice them.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by StackHawk: “API Security Testing: A Complete Guide for Developers”.
By the numbers:
- 99% of organisations experienced API security issues in the past 12 months.
- 55% delayed application releases because of security concerns.
- The cost of fixing vulnerabilities in production is 100x higher than catching them during development.
Key questions
Q: What fails when API authentication is bypassed or broken?
A: The control that fails is the API’s ability to confirm that the caller is entitled to reach the endpoint at all.
Q: Why do broken API authorization flaws create such a broad risk to customer data and operations?
A: Broken authorization is risky because the API often becomes the enforcement point for sensitive business data and actions.
Q: What are the signs that API penetration testing is missing real risk?
A: If a programme only tests a supplied endpoint list, reports many alerts without proof of exploit, or misses undocumented APIs, it is probably under-covering the true attack surface.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every exposed API path Map REST, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, internal service calls, and third-party APIs so security testing covers the full attack surface, not just the documented public endpoints.
- Test authentication failure states Use missing, expired, invalid, and manipulated credentials in your test suite to confirm the API rejects requests when identity proof is absent or broken.
- Separate object and property authorization checks Validate that callers cannot change object IDs to reach other users’ data and cannot read or modify restricted properties that the API should suppress.
Bottom line: API security testing matters because many exposure events happen when the running service accepts requests it should reject, not when the code merely looks risky on review.
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02/08/2026 12:35 pm
API security testing has become an access-control control, not just a quality control. The article’s core finding is that authentication and authorization flaws now show up as exploitable runtime conditions, not merely coding defects. That shifts API testing into the same governance conversation as IAM, because the real question is whether a caller can prove identity and be constrained correctly at the moment the API decides.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 73% of vaults are misconfigured, leading to unauthorised access and exposure of sensitive data, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Secrets management is a top five cybersecurity priority for only 33% of organisations, behind cloud security (45%), API security (42%), and endpoint security (36%), according to the 2024 State of Secrets Management Survey.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should teams rely on gateway controls or API testing to prevent exposure?
A: Gateway controls and API testing solve different problems. Gateways can reduce exposure and centralize policy, but they do not prove that each endpoint, object, and field is enforced correctly at runtime. Teams should use gateway policy as a guardrail and API security testing as the validation step that confirms the backend actually behaves as intended.
👉 Read our full editorial: API security testing closes the gap between broken auth and exposure