API Compliance: How to Reduce API Risks

API compliance is critical in the enterprise. After all, you can't afford to have any API risks damage your revenue streams or reputation. 

In this blog, we give you an overview of API compliance and how to avoid API risks.

What Is API Compliance?

API compliance means complying with the regulations that apply to APIs in your industry. These regulations must be followed to protect your APIs and backend data.

Why Is API Compliance Important?

API compliance is important to reducing costs and driving revenue. If you don't mitigate API risks, you'll face severe penalties. 

📕 Related Resource: Learn more about What Is IT Compliance?

Are APIs Vulnerable?

APIs are vulnerable to security threats. You must apply API security best practices in order to protect against attacks. Common API vulnerabilities include malicious code injection and broken object level authorization. To avoid these vulnerabilities, you need to make sure to secure your endpoints. 

What Are API Risks?

The most critical API risks in the enterprise are service level agreements (SLA) penalties, data breaches, and regulatory compliance regulations. There are also API security risks, such as the OWASP top 10 API vulnerabilities. Both types of API risks come with costs.

These costs are legal, financial, operational, and reputation. A security breach can bring legal repercussions. Think of the health sector, particularly in Europe with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These breaches can also bring brand damage and a loss of customer trust. All of these result in lost dollars.

Data breaches are common. They usually aren't quickly discovered. And they are rarely easily remedied — all of which leads to sizeable financial losses, as illustrated below. 

So, how can you avoid API risks? 

How to Ensure API Compliance — and Reduce Risk

Here's how to ensure API compliance and reduce risks with API governance. 

Watch the webinar below or keep reading for a recap of three risks — and how to avoid them. 

API Risk #1: SLA Penalties

You need to ensure that your SLAs are maintained. If you don't, you'll face monetary and disciplinary measures. 

But avoiding SLA penalties can be difficult, especially as your enterprise grows.

As you embark on a digital transformation strategy and gain partnerships, it becomes difficult to track all of these SLA agreements.

So, what can you do?

By using an enterprise-grade API platform like Akana, you can effectively manage your applications and SLAs. You'll reduce the risk of downtime and slow performance.

That means you can ensure API compliance with your SLAs — and avoid the API risk of SLA penalties. 

API Risk #2: Data Breach

You can't risk a data breach. It only takes one to cause irreparable damage to your most important asset — your reputation.

But ensuring your APIs are secure from threats is a never-ending challenge. If you don't protect your APIs, you'll face litigation, fines, and damage. This can cost you customers. 

So, what can you do?

By using a security-focused API platform like Akana, you can apply powerful security. And you can even automate it. 

That means you can avoid the API risk of data breaches — and avoid the costs. 

API Risk #3: Regulatory Compliance Violations

You need to meet all of the regulatory requirements required by your industry. This may be PSD2 in open banking, FHIR in healthcare, or the open insurance initiative.

But it can be difficult to track changing API requirements. And it can be time-intensive to update each API on a case-by-case basis. 

So, what can you do?

By using a compliant API platform like Akana, you can adapt quickly to regulatory changes. 

That means you can avoid the API risk of regulatory compliance violations — and the large fines associated with those violations.

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Ensure API Compliance With Akana

Akana makes it easy to ensure API compliance and mitigate API risks. 

That's because Akana makes it easy to: 

• Manage everything in one spot and stay on top of your SLA agreements.
• Strengthen security with automated policies and authorization / authentication.
• Comply with regulatory standards in industries like banking, healthcare, and insurance.

So, how does your API strategy measure up? And how much value can you create by using Akana to ensure API compliance and avoid API risks? Find out using our interactive API performance indicators tool. 

MEASURE COMPLIANCE AND RISK

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Explore additional resources:

• API Basics
• API Security Best Practices