One Poll survey of 250 IT professionals on the state of application programming interface (API) security, which highlights growing concern for cybersecurity risk related to API use.

1. API Security Survey
A survey of 250 IT managers and security professionals
S U R V E Y
The survey was conducted in November 2017 by OnePoll for Imperva, Inc. with respondents
from companies with at least 250 employees, and/or $1 million in revenue in the US.

2. Due to increased usage, APIs
have become a new attack
vector for cybercriminals and
make applications and
databases vulnerable to web
application attacks.

3. Yes 68.8% No 24.4%Don’t know 6.8%
Are you exposing APIs to your partners and the public?

4. How many public facing APIs exist in your organization?
0 1-10 11-50 51-100 101-200 201-300
3.2%
301-400 401-500 501-750 751-1000 1001+ Don’t know
5.6%
8.8% 8.8%
10.4%
8%
10.8%
12.4%
8% 8%
7.2%
8.8%
Number of APIs

5. When thinking about securing your APIs,
what is your main concern?
Bots and
DDoS attacks
Authentication
enforcement
Need to
profile APIs
Inspection of
API content to
detect attacks
Other concern
Not applicable /
No concerns
39.2%
24.4%
13.6%
14.8%
0.4%
7.6%

6. Yes
80% 12%
No
8%
Not applicable /
Don't Know
Are you using an API gateway to
manage public facing APIs?
?

7. Yes
80%14.8%
No
5.2%
Not applicable /
Don't Know
Are you using a public cloud service
to manage and secure APIs?
?
X

8. 76.4%63.2%
Web Application
Firewall
API GatewayNo security
How are you securing your APIs?
Network FirewallNot applicable /
I don't know
Runtime Application
Self Protection
44.8%
5.6%
63.2%0.8%

9. 1.21%78.23% 10.89%
DevOpsIT Security team App Developers
Who typically oversees the security of your APIs?
6.05%
DevSecOps
Someone else Not applicable / I don't know
0.4%
?
3.2%

10. 8.4%
76.4%
15.2% No
Yes
Not applicable /
Don't Know
Does your company treat API security
differently than web security?

11. Are DevOps part of your
application development?
Can you see security (DevSecOps) in the
future of application development?
Yes
92.4%
No
4.4%
I'm not sure
3.2%
Yes
89.6%
No
8%
Not applicable /
Don't Know
2.4%
? ?

12. APIs represent a mushrooming security risk
because they expose multiple avenues for
hackers to try to access a company’s data.
To close the door on security risks and
protect their customers, companies need to
treat APIs with the same level of protection
that they provide for their business-critical
web applications.”
— Terry Ray, Imperva CTO
“

13. LEARN MORE
Six Ways to Secure APIs

14. Imperva is a leading provider of cyber security solutions that protect
business-critical data and applications.