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25/06/2026 5:04 pm
TL;DR: Shadow APIs and zombie APIs expand attack surface because they sit outside normal review, inventory, and offboarding processes, while 137% growth in API-targeting attacks in 2023 underscores the risk, according to Entro Security. The governance problem is not visibility alone but lifecycle control over API access and authentication secrets.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Entro Security: Shadow API , Zombie API – Effective Detection and Extermination
By the numbers:
- cyberattacks targeting APIs have surged by 137% in 2023 compared to the year before.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams manage shadow APIs before they become exposure points?
A: Security teams should treat every unregistered API as a governance exception until it is owned, inventoried, and assigned an authentication method.
Q: When does a zombie API become a real security problem?
A: A zombie API becomes a real security problem when deprecated access still works, because the organisation has lost the accountability link between current business use and active permissions.
Q: What do teams get wrong about API least privilege?
A: Teams often define least privilege once at release time and then leave it unchanged while the API's real usage shifts.
Practitioner guidance
- Build an authoritative API inventory Record every API owner, purpose, authentication method, data access scope, and retirement date so no interface sits outside governance.
- Tie API decommissioning to credential revocation Remove secrets, JWT signing trust, service dependencies, and downstream permissions as part of the same retirement workflow.
- Enforce least privilege for all API access paths Scope each API token or secret to the smallest feasible set of actions and data, then review those scopes whenever usage changes.
What's in the full article
Entro Security's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The step-by-step detection and extermination workflow for shadow and zombie APIs across discovery, triage, and remediation.
- The article's practical guidance on monitoring patterns and static code analysis for finding hidden interfaces before they are abused.
- The secrets-management and JWT handling advice that supports API authentication hardening in live environments.
- The remediation playbook for isolating suspicious APIs and confirming whether they were introduced accidentally or left behind after deprecation.
👉 Read Entro Security's analysis of shadow and zombie API detection →
Shadow and zombie APIs: what IAM teams need to fix?
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25/06/2026 5:33 pm
Shadow API detection is really non-human identity discovery by another name. A hidden API is an unmanaged access path that can authenticate, hold secrets, and reach data without living inside the normal inventory. That makes the governance problem one of lifecycle control, not just network scanning. Practitioners should treat unknown APIs as identity objects until proven otherwise.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 1.5 out of 10 organisations are highly confident in their ability to secure NHIs, compared to nearly 1 in 4 for securing human identities, according to The State of Non-Human Identity Security.
- A separate finding from the same research shows that 85% of organisations lack full visibility into third-party vendors connected via OAuth apps, which reinforces how quickly hidden access paths outgrow oversight.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who owns the risk when an abandoned API still has access?
A: The owning team, the platform team, and the governance function all share accountability because deprecated access is a lifecycle failure, not a single technical mistake. The practical standard is simple: if an API can still authenticate, someone still owns its risk, even if the original use case has ended.
👉 Read our full editorial: Shadow and zombie APIs expose the NHI governance gap
