Shifting Left: A Game-Changer for FinServ API Security

APIs are now more essential than ever, particularly for financial services organizations that rely on them to handle daily transaction payments for account holders, to facilitate seamless online account openings, and much more.

Additionally, with an ever-evolving financial services ecosystem where partnerships with FinTechs through APIs are commonplace, the use of APIs is growing substantially in the sector. Consequently, financial services institutions are more reliant on APIs than ever before.

However, this growing dependence on APIs has drawn the attention of attackers.

Recognizing the critical role these APIs play, attackers are constantly targeting them, aiming to exploit, abuse, and compromise them in order to gain access to systems and exfiltrate critical data. The complexity and management challenges of hybrid and multicloud environments are compounded by the sole reliance of traditional app and API security tools for traffic-based discovery and inspection, which provides only a partial picture and discovery of APIs only after they are deployed to production.

These scenarios pose serious business risks, including large-scale data breaches, compliance issues, and hefty regulatory fines. But financial services organizations must accept these risks because their customers demand fast engagement, all-up account views, and easy money transfers. Under the hood, these are all facilitated through APIs.

In this article, we delve into the transformative advantages of shifting left for financial services operating in hybrid and multicloud environments and explain why it marks the next significant milestone in FinServ API security. Through early discovery directly from the codebase, comprehensive understanding, and preemptive documentation, organizations can fortify their defenses, close critical gaps in visibility, improve controls, satisfy compliance and regulators, and set a new standard for API security in an industry where the stakes are extremely high.