<p>APIs often have access to sensitive data, making it critical for organizations to know about every single API in use. Yet many companies struggle with shadow APIs and undocumented endpoints. You can’t protect what you can’t see, making comprehensive API visibility fundamental to any security program.</p>
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<p>Effective API discovery requires a systematic approach that spans the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). The following are seven essential API discovery best practices security teams should implement, from source code analysis to continuous monitoring.</p>
<section class=”section main-article-chapter” data-menu-title=”1. Conduct source code analysis and repository scanning”>
<h2 class=”section-title”><i class=”icon” data-icon=”1″></i>1. Conduct source code analysis and repository scanning</h2>
<p>Comprehensive API discovery begins at the source. Modern static application security testing tools automatically scan code repositories to identify API definitions, endpoints and configurations such as <a href=”https://www.techtarget.com/searchapparchitecture/definition/OpenAPI-Specification”>OpenAPI</a> definitions.</p>
<p>Pay special attention to configuration files, environment variables and deployment scripts that might reference external APIs or define new endpoints. Many organizations discover forgotten APIs lurking in legacy codebases or experimental branches.</p>
<p>Tools to consider include the following:</p>
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<li>StackHawk’s API Discovery connects directly to code repositories, using an inside-out approach to discover APIs from source code with automated schema generation.</li>
<li>Semgrep provides fast static analysis across most programming languages to find API patterns in code, making it an excellent open source option for identifying REST endpoint declarations, GraphQL schemas and API framework usage.</li>
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<section class=”section main-article-chapter” data-menu-title=”2. Perform API gateway and management platform analysis”>
<h2 class=”section-ti
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