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08/06/2026 4:50 pm
TL;DR: Broken API authentication, excessive data exposure, and weak logging make APIs a durable breach path for sensitive data and service access, according to StrongDM’s API security analysis. The real issue is not API volume alone but the identity and access model behind it, where poorly governed tokens and overbroad permissions outlive the controls meant to constrain them.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by StrongDM: What is API Security? Risks, Checklist, and More
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams handle API keys and tokens as part of identity governance?
A: Security teams should treat API keys and tokens as governed identities, not just technical secrets.
Q: Why do broken API authentication controls create such a large breach risk?
A: Broken API authentication is dangerous because a valid caller can be accepted before any deeper control has a chance to stop abuse.
Q: What do organisations get wrong about API logging and monitoring?
A: Many teams log traffic but not identity behaviour.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every API credential class Map API keys, bearer tokens, service accounts, and certificates to the business process that owns them.
- Bind API permissions to minimum response scope Review which fields and records each API can return, not just which endpoints it can call.
- Pair logging with identity-aware anomaly detection Capture authentication failures, unusual call bursts, new source locations, and repeated token reuse as identity signals.
What's in the full article
StrongDM's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step API security checklist guidance for discovery, access control, logging, and testing.
- Examples of Zero Trust and gateway patterns applied to API traffic and user access.
- Practical risk assessment prompts for teams that need to prioritise remediation work.
- StrongDM's own platform framing for unifying access across databases, servers, and clusters.
👉 Read StrongDM's API security checklist and best-practice guidance →
API security risks and controls: what IAM teams should fix first?
Explore further
08/06/2026 6:42 pm
API security is identity governance with an application surface area. The article correctly points to authentication, access control, and monitoring, but the deeper lesson is that APIs are simply where identity decisions become machine-executable. When tokens, keys, and delegated access are not governed as identities, the breach surface expands beyond the application team and into every system that trusts the API.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Two-thirds of enterprises have endured a successful cyberattack resulting from compromised non-human identities, with a quarter encountering multiple attacks, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- More than 1 in 5 non-human identities are believed to be insufficiently secured, which shows how quickly unmanaged machine access becomes normalised across large environments.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do you know if API access is too broad?
A: API access is too broad when the calling system receives more data or more privilege than it needs for the transaction it performs. A practical test is to compare the API response, the caller’s business purpose, and the minimum fields required. If those do not align, the access boundary is oversized.
👉 Read our full editorial: API security best practices are really identity governance
