Definitions are always tough in the world of networking. The initial concept was all hardware: a group of computers connected through cards, routers, and cables. Oh, how things have changed in a mere fifty years!

Software virtualization allowed systems administrators to spin up “hard drives” in no time. This was so practical that it was applied to the network itself in something called a Software Defined Network. Unfortunately, it took several decades for hardware to catch up to this kind of virtualization.

The hybrid cloud has accelerated the adoption of virtual networks in today’s federal tech landscape. Combining networks means leveraging an old concept called Application Programming Interfaces, or “APIs.”  They allowed two or more programs to communicate.

Unfortunately, this innocuous part of networking has become a target for malicious actors. During the interview, Patrick Sullivan from Akamai gives a broad background on the importance of understanding where APIs fit in federal network visibility.

Attacking systems via the API has become so popular that scraping content has gone from websites to the API itself; Patrick mentions a new phrase called, “API Scraping.”

Network managers demand visibility and awareness, it seems like they should start to consider one of the newest attack vectors, the API. There is some validity to starting to look at the API as the network.

 

 

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