API Security

4/25/2026

OWASP API Security Top 10: Complete Guide for Developers (2026)

The OWASP API Security Top 10 is a ranked list of the most critical API vulnerabilities, maintained by the Open Web Application Security Project. The 2023 edition covers ten categories: Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA), Broken Authentication, Broken Object Property Level Authorization, Unrestricted Resource Consumption, Broken Function Level Authorization, Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows, Server Side Request Forgery, Security Misconfiguration, Improper Inventory Management, and Unsafe Consumption of APIs.

Here's what most guides won't tell you: six of these ten vulnerabilities involve technically valid requests. The attacker uses real credentials, calls real endpoints, and receives real data. Traditional scanners look for malformed input, they miss the category of attacks that look exactly like normal API usage.

This guide covers every OWASP API Top 10 category with real examples, code patterns, and practical testing steps. If you're a developer who owns API security for your team without a dedicated AppSec engineer, this is written for you.

Key Takeaways

BOLA (API1) has been the #1 API vulnerability since 2019 because rule-based scanners rarely catch it, the requests look legitimate

Three categories are new in 2023: API6 (business flow abuse), API7 (SSRF), and API10 (unsafe third-party API consumption)

Most API breaches involve valid credentials and correct HTTP methods, they don't trigger signature-based alerts

Running OWASP API Top 10 checks in your CI/CD pipeline catches vulnerabilities before they reach production, not after a breach

ApyGuard provides 100% OWASP API Top 10 coverage with automated scanning that detects behavior-based vulnerabilities traditional tools miss

What Is the OWASP API Security Top 10?

The OWASP API Security Top 10 is a community-driven standard that identifies the ten most common and impactful security risks in APIs. OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) publishes the list based on real-world vulnerability data, penetration testing findings, and contributions from the global security community. The current edition was published in 2023.

OWASP API Top 10 vs. OWASP Web Application Top 10

These are two separate lists. The OWASP Web Application Top 10 covers browser-based vulnerabilities like XSS, insecure deserialization, and misconfigured security headers. The OWASP API Security Top 10 addresses vulnerabilities specific to how APIs expose data and logic, broken object authorization, authentication flaws, and business workflow abuse that web scanners were never designed to find.

APIs require a separate list because they operate differently. A web app serves HTML to browsers. An API serves structured data to machines. The attack surface is different: authentication tokens, object IDs, resource consumption rates, and third-party API trust relationships are API-specific concerns that the standard web top 10 doesn't address.

What Changed in the 2023 Update?

The 2023 OWASP API Security Top 10 introduced three new vulnerability categories, merged two existing ones, and dropped two that are now addressed elsewhere.

Change	Details
BOLA renamed from IDOR	"Broken Object Level Authorization" replaced "Insecure Direct Object Reference" to better describe the root cause: missing authorization, not just predictable IDs
Mass Assignment + Excessive Data Exposure merged	Two related 2019 categories combined into API3:2023 (Broken Object Property Level Authorization)
New: API6	Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows, business logic abuse via automation
New: API7	Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF), elevated by cloud infrastructure risk
New: API10	Unsafe Consumption of APIs, third-party API trust failures
Dropped: Insufficient Logging & Monitoring	Important but not API-specific
Dropped: Injections	Now addressed within BOPLA and Security Misconfiguration

The three new categories reflect how API architectures have evolved. Microservices mean your API now calls other APIs, and trusts their output (API10). Cloud deployments create internal HTTP endpoints an attacker can reach via SSRF (API7). Modern business models run on automated workflows that attackers exploit to commit fraud (API6).

API1:2023, Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA)

BOLA has held the #1 position since the first OWASP API Security Top 10 in 2019. Its persistence at the top isn't because teams don't know about it, it's because it's genuinely hard to detect automatically.

What Is BOLA?

BOLA occurs when an API endpoint receives an object ID as input but doesn't verify that the authenticated user is authorized to access that specific object. The API asks "who are you?" but never asks "are you allowed to see this?"

How BOLA Is Exploited

Consider a ride-sharing app. A driver's mobile app calls GET /api/v1/trips/48291 to fetch trip details. The driver's JWT token proves they're authenticated. But the server returns the trip for any ID, including IDs belonging to other drivers:

GET /api/v1/trips/48291 HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9...

# Attacker changes the ID:
GET /api/v1/trips/48292 HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9...
# Returns: another driver's personal data, pickup/dropoff addresses, earnings

The request is valid. The token is valid. The HTTP method is correct. Every signature-based scanner sees a normal GET request.

Real-world scenario: A fintech startup launched a personal finance API in early 2025. Six months post-launch, a security researcher discovered that the /api/v1/accounts/{accountId}/transactions endpoint returned transaction history for any account ID, not just the authenticated user's account. Sequential integer IDs made enumeration trivial. The researcher estimated that 40,000 user accounts were exposed before the team patched it. The vulnerability had existed since day one; their CI/CD scans had never flagged it.

How to Detect BOLA

The challenge is that BOLA detection requires understanding user-object relationships, not just request syntax. Ask:

Does this endpoint use user-supplied IDs to retrieve data?
Does the server verify the requesting user owns or has permission to access the object with that ID?
Can authenticated users access objects belonging to other users by changing the ID?

Automated detection requires behavioral testing: create two user accounts, obtain an object ID belonging to user A, and test whether user B can access it. Rule-based scanners don't do this, they test for SQL injection or XSS patterns, not authorization logic.

How to Prevent BOLA

// Vulnerable, no ownership check
app.get('/api/v1/accounts/:accountId/transactions', async (req, res) => {
 const transactions = await Transaction.findAll({ accountId: req.params.accountId });
 return res.json(transactions);
});

// Secure, verify the requesting user owns this account
app.get('/api/v1/accounts/:accountId/transactions', async (req, res) => {
 const account = await Account.findById(req.params.accountId);
 if (!account || account.userId!== req.user.id) {
 return res.status(403).json({ error: 'Forbidden' });
 }
 const transactions = await Transaction.findAll({ accountId: account.id });
 return res.json(transactions);
});

Additional prevention measures:

Use random, non-sequential GUIDs instead of integer IDs
Implement object-level authorization checks at the service layer, not just the route layer
Write authorization tests before shipping any endpoint that accepts an object ID

ApyGuard's API behavior profiling learns which users should access which objects, then flags cross-user object access patterns that rule-based scanners miss entirely.

Want to test your APIs for BOLA right now? ApyGuard runs automated BOLA detection against all your endpoints in minutes. Start a free scan, no credit card required.

API2:2023, Broken Authentication

Broken authentication covers failures in how APIs verify identity. OWASP rates it "Easy" to exploit and "Severe" in impact, which means it's the category where attackers cause the most damage with the least technical skill.

Common Authentication Failures in APIs

No rate limiting on login endpoints (enables credential stuffing)
JWT tokens accepted with {"alg":"none"}, meaning any payload passes verification
JWT expiration not validated, tokens that should be expired still work
Authentication tokens exposed in URLs (/api/reset-password?token=abc123)
Sensitive account changes (email, password) accepted without re-authentication
Microservice-to-microservice calls with no authentication at all

How Attackers Exploit Broken Authentication

GraphQL batching bypass: REST APIs typically enforce per-request rate limits. But GraphQL allows multiple operations in a single request. An attacker sends one HTTP request containing 500 login attempts:

mutation {
 login1: login(email: "[email protected]", password: "password1") { token }
 login2: login(email: "[email protected]", password: "password2") { token }
 # ...500 more
}

One request, 500 credential attempts, one rate-limit count.

JWT algorithm confusion: Many JWT libraries accept whatever algorithm the token header specifies. An attacker modifies a legitimate token to specify "alg": "none", the library skips signature verification entirely and accepts the token as valid.

# Vulnerable, trusts the algorithm in the token header
decoded = jwt.decode(token, secret)

# Secure, explicitly enforces algorithm
decoded = jwt.decode(token, secret, algorithms=["HS256"])

Detection and Prevention

Enumerate all authentication flows in your API, including password reset, social login, and service-to-service auth
Apply the same brute-force protections to password reset and MFA endpoints as to login
Never accept alg: none in JWT tokens
Implement account lockout after five to ten failed attempts
Require re-authentication for any sensitive action (email change, payment method update)
Test authentication edge cases before deploying, these vulnerabilities are easy to find in testing and expensive to find in production

API3:2023, Broken Object Property Level Authorization (BOPLA)

BOPLA emerged from combining two 2019 vulnerabilities: Mass Assignment and Excessive Data Exposure. Both share the same root problem, the API doesn't control which object properties a user can read or write.

Excessive data exposure: Your GET /api/v1/users/me response includes {"name":"Alice","email":"[email protected]","role":"admin","internal_user_id":"u_12345","stripe_customer_id":"cus_abc"}. The client app only displays name and email, but all those fields are in the response. Any API client can read them.

Mass assignment: Your POST /api/v1/users endpoint auto-maps request body fields to your User model. An attacker sends {"name":"Eve","email":"[email protected]","role":"admin"}. Your ORM updates the role field because it was in the request.

Prevention: Define explicit response schemas, return only the fields the client actually needs. For writes, create an allowlist of fields that can be updated via each endpoint. Never auto-bind request bodies directly to database models.

API4:2023, Unrestricted Resource Consumption

APIs expose computation, bandwidth, and data at scale. Without limits, attackers can cause denial-of-service conditions or run up your infrastructure costs, often without any special tools, using nothing more than curl.

Common failures:

No rate limiting per user or IP on resource-intensive endpoints
No limits on payload size (uploading arbitrarily large files)
No pagination enforcement, one request returns millions of records
No query complexity limits in GraphQL (deeply nested queries exhaust CPU)
Unlimited webhooks or callbacks at attacker-controlled URLs

Prevention: Apply rate limits at the API gateway level. Enforce maximum payload sizes. Require pagination on list endpoints. If you use GraphQL, implement query depth and complexity analysis. Monitor for unusual consumption patterns with your API traffic analyzer.

API5:2023, Broken Function Level Authorization (BFLA)

BFLA and BOLA are both authorization failures, but they operate at different levels. BOLA is about accessing another user's objects at the same privilege level. BFLA is about accessing functions designed for a higher privilege level.

BOLA vs. BFLA: What's the Difference?

	BOLA	BFLA
What the attacker does	Accesses data belonging to another user	Accesses admin or privileged functionality
Example	User B reads User A's invoices	Regular user calls `DELETE /admin/users/456`
Root cause	Missing object-level ownership check	Missing function-level role check
Detection	Requires two-user behavioral testing	Requires privilege escalation testing

BFLA often appears where developers secure UI routes but not API endpoints. The admin dashboard is protected by a role check. But the underlying API it calls, POST /api/v1/admin/bulk-delete, has no server-side role verification because "users can't see the admin UI anyway."

Prevention: Default-deny all functions. Explicitly verify role and permissions server-side for every function, regardless of whether it's reachable via the UI. Conduct regular privilege escalation tests as part of your API security review.

API6:2023, Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows (NEW in 2023)

This category is new in 2023 and represents a fundamental shift in how API security is understood: the vulnerability isn't in the code, it's in the business logic. The API works exactly as designed. Attackers just use it faster and at larger scale than humans can.

Why This Category Is New

Before widespread API adoption, business logic abuse required manual effort. Now, a single script can call your API thousands of times per minute from multiple IP addresses. The attack surface is every automated-abuse-able business flow.

Real examples from OWASP:

Scalping: A bot monitors your sneaker drop API. When new inventory appears, it submits thousands of purchase requests across rotating IP addresses, buying all available stock before real customers can.
Referral fraud: An attacker scripts account creation to generate referral credits. Each new account triggers your referral bonus.
Slot abuse: A scheduling API lets a bot book all available appointment slots, blocking legitimate users.

The API returned correct responses to all of these requests. Nothing about the requests is technically wrong.

How to Protect Sensitive Business Flows

Identify which of your API flows have business value an attacker could extract through automation
Apply device fingerprinting to detect headless browsers and scripted clients
Implement CAPTCHA or proof-of-work on flows where automation is high-risk
Use IP reputation filtering, block Tor exit nodes and known proxy services
Set tighter rate limits on business-sensitive endpoints than on general API endpoints

ApyGuard's behavior profiling establishes baselines for normal API usage patterns. Automated abuse flows, abnormal velocity, repetitive sequences, non-human timing patterns, deviate from that baseline and trigger alerts.

API7:2023, Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) (NEW in 2023)

SSRF occurs when an API fetches remote resources based on user-supplied input, and an attacker redirects those requests to internal infrastructure.

SSRF in Cloud Environments: The AWS Metadata Risk

Cloud deployments make SSRF particularly dangerous. Every AWS EC2 instance has a local metadata endpoint at http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ that returns IAM credentials, security tokens, and instance configuration. An attacker who can make your API issue requests to that address can extract credentials that grant access to your entire AWS environment.

# Attacker sends this to your image-processing endpoint:
POST /api/v1/fetch-image
Content-Type: application/json

{"url": "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/"}

# Your API fetches the URL, returns the response:
# {"AccessKeyId": "ASIA...", "SecretAccessKey": "...", "Token": "..."}

The 2019 Capital One breach, 100 million customer records, exploited SSRF to extract EC2 metadata credentials.

Prevention

Validate user-supplied URLs against an allowlist of expected domains before fetching
Block requests to private IP ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, 169.254.0.0/16)
Disable HTTP redirects when fetching user-supplied URLs
Never return raw responses from user-supplied URLs, process and return only what the client needs
Use IMDSv2 (requiring a token-based request flow) in AWS environments to protect the metadata endpoint

API8:2023, Security Misconfiguration

Security misconfiguration is the broadest category on the list. It covers incorrect settings at any layer: network, platform, web server, application, or database. Misconfigurations are the easiest category for automated scanners to detect, and still among the most common vulnerabilities found in production APIs.

The Most Common API Misconfigurations

CORS misconfiguration: The most prevalent API misconfiguration. Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * allows any website to make credentialed requests to your API via a browser. Combined with Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true, it enables cross-site request forgery at scale.

# Dangerous combination:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

# Secure, allowlist specific origins:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://app.yourdomain.com
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

For a detailed breakdown, see our guide on CORS misconfiguration in API security.

Other common misconfigurations:

Debug endpoints (/api/v1/__debug, /swagger.json) exposed in production
Unnecessary HTTP methods enabled (TRACE, OPTIONS on production endpoints)
Default credentials on API gateways or management interfaces
Verbose error messages returning stack traces and internal paths
Missing TLS, API traffic sent over HTTP

Prevention: Include security configuration checks in your CI/CD pipeline. Disable or remove debug endpoints before deployment. Run automated misconfiguration scanning, ApyGuard's API security testing checks for all common misconfigurations across your endpoints automatically.

API9:2023, Improper Inventory Management (Shadow APIs)

You can't secure what you don't know exists. API9 covers the blind spots: undocumented endpoints, forgotten API versions, third-party integrations with broader access than intended, and development or staging APIs exposed to the internet.

Why Shadow APIs Are a Security Risk

Teams move fast. API versions get deprecated but not disabled. A beta endpoint deployed six months ago has no rate limiting because it was "just for internal testing." A third-party integration was granted broad data access during development, and no one scoped it down before launch.

The OWASP example is instructive: a researcher discovered a beta API endpoint that lacked the rate limiting present in the production version. The production /api/v1/reset-password endpoint limited attempts. The beta /api/beta/reset-password didn't. Password reset tokens were four-digit, and unprotected.

Another OWASP scenario: A social platform's data-sharing API was connected to a third-party analytics app. The app requested access to user data. Users consented. But the API returned far more data than users saw on the consent screen, including private messages, location history, and contact lists. The excess data exposure affected 50 million users.

Finding APIs You Didn't Know You Had

Shadow API discovery requires active enumeration, not just reviewing documentation. Approaches:

Chrome extension discovery: ApyGuard's API Discovery Extension monitors your browser traffic to catalog every API endpoint your applications call, including undocumented ones
Traffic analysis: Monitor production traffic patterns to find endpoints receiving requests that aren't in your OpenAPI spec
DNS enumeration: Check for staging, dev, and beta subdomains exposing API services
Third-party audit: Review what data access each integration actually has, not just what was intended

Not sure what APIs your applications are actually calling? ApyGuard's API Discovery tool finds every endpoint, documented or not, and includes them in your security scan. Try it free for seven days.

API10:2023, Unsafe Consumption of APIs (NEW in 2023)

The final category is the newest conceptually: your API trusts data from third-party APIs without validating or sanitizing it.

Modern applications are chains of API calls. Your API calls a payment processor, a shipping provider, a fraud detection service, and a data enrichment API. You validate input from users, but do you validate data coming back from these third-party services?

The attack scenario: An attacker compromises a third-party data enrichment service your application uses. That service starts returning malicious payloads. Your API receives the response, treats it as trusted internal data, and processes it, triggering SQL injection, path traversal, or code execution via data you assumed was safe.

A realistic example:

# Vulnerable, trusting third-party API response
response = requests.get("https://third-party-api.com/user-data/12345")
data = response.json()
db.execute(f"INSERT INTO enriched_data VALUES ('{data['name']}', '{data['email']}')")
# If data['name'] contains SQL: Robert'); DROP TABLE enriched_data;--

# Secure, validate and parameterize everything from external APIs
response = requests.get("https://third-party-api.com/user-data/12345")
data = response.json()
name = sanitize_string(data.get('name', ''))
email = validate_email(data.get('email', ''))
db.execute("INSERT INTO enriched_data VALUES (?,?)", (name, email))

Prevention:

Treat data from third-party APIs as untrusted input, apply the same validation and sanitization you apply to user input
Implement request signing between services so tampered responses can be detected
Maintain an inventory of every third-party API your application calls and what data it receives
Audit third-party integrations when they release updates, their API contract may change

How to Test Your APIs Against the Full OWASP Top 10

Manual vs. Automated Testing

Manual API penetration testing can find all ten OWASP categories, but it doesn't scale. A thorough manual pentest for a mid-size API surface takes two to three weeks and typically runs $15,000–$40,000. Most teams can afford this once or twice a year. The problem: code ships every day.

The gaps between pentests are where vulnerabilities live. A new endpoint added in week two of a quarterly sprint doesn't get tested until the next engagement, months later.

Automated scanning closes the gap. It's not a replacement for manual testing, skilled pentesters find vulnerabilities no scanner will catch. But automated scanning run on every deployment means you catch regressions immediately, not in the next annual pentest.

What automated scanning covers well:

BOLA (behavioral, cross-user authorization tests)
Broken authentication (rate limit bypass, JWT algorithm confusion, expiration checks)
Security misconfiguration (CORS, headers, debug endpoints, TLS)
Unrestricted resource consumption (rate limit verification)
SSRF (URL validation bypass attempts)

What still benefits from manual review:

Complex business logic in API6 (requires understanding your business model)
Third-party API trust assessment in API10 (requires reviewing integrations)

Running OWASP Coverage in Your CI/CD Pipeline

The most effective deployment for OWASP API security testing is directly in your CI/CD pipeline. Every build triggers a scan. Builds that introduce critical vulnerabilities are blocked before they reach staging or production.

ApyGuard integrates natively with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins. Connect your OpenAPI spec, or let the platform auto-discover your endpoints, and add the scan step to your workflow. Critical findings fail the build. Lower-severity findings generate a report for review without blocking the pipeline.

This is shift-left security in practice: catch OWASP API vulnerabilities at the same moment developers are making changes, not weeks later.

See ApyGuard's full feature set for CI/CD integration details and OWASP coverage specifics.

OWASP API Security Checklist

Use this checklist against each API endpoint before deployment:

API1, BOLA:

Every endpoint that accepts an object ID verifies the requesting user owns or has access to that object
Object IDs are non-sequential (GUIDs or random identifiers)
Authorization tests cover cross-user object access

API2, Broken Authentication:

Rate limiting on login, password reset, and MFA endpoints
JWT library configured to reject alg: none and enforce specific algorithms
Sensitive account changes require password confirmation
Authentication tokens are never exposed in URLs

API3, BOPLA:

API responses return only necessary fields, no undocumented properties
Write endpoints use an explicit allowlist of updatable fields
Mass assignment protection is active on all model-bound endpoints

API4, Resource Consumption:

Rate limits are configured per user and per IP
Maximum payload size is enforced
List endpoints require pagination and enforce a maximum page size

API5, BFLA:

All admin and privileged functions enforce server-side role verification
No function is secured only at the UI layer
Privilege escalation tests are part of your test suite

API6, Business Flow Abuse:

Business-critical flows (purchases, registrations, referrals) have rate limits stricter than general endpoints
Automated client detection is in place for high-value flows

API7, SSRF:

User-supplied URLs are validated against a domain allowlist before fetching
Requests to private IP ranges are blocked
HTTP redirects are disabled when fetching user-supplied URLs

API8, Security Misconfiguration:

CORS allowlist contains only expected origins
Debug endpoints are disabled in production
Error messages don't expose stack traces or internal paths
All API traffic requires TLS

API9, Inventory Management:

All API endpoints (including deprecated versions) are documented
Third-party integrations are scoped to minimum required data access
API discovery scans run regularly to find undocumented endpoints

API10, Unsafe API Consumption:

Third-party API responses are validated and sanitized before processing
Parameterized queries are used for any data derived from external APIs

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between OWASP Top 10 and OWASP API Security Top 10?

The OWASP Top 10 covers the most critical security risks for web applications (XSS, SQL injection, insecure deserialization). The OWASP API Security Top 10 addresses risks specific to APIs, particularly authorization logic failures and behavior-based vulnerabilities that web scanners aren't designed to find. APIs expose data programmatically rather than through browser interfaces, creating a different attack surface that requires its own security framework.

What is the most critical OWASP API vulnerability?

BOLA (Broken Object Level Authorization, API1) has held the top position since 2019. It's the most common because it requires no special exploit, just changing an object ID in a request. It's the most dangerous because traditional scanners don't test for it (valid credentials, correct HTTP method, no malformed input). And it's the hardest to detect in code review because the vulnerability is in what's absent (the authorization check), not what's present.

How do I test for BOLA in my API?

Create two test user accounts. With account A, create a resource and note its ID. With account B, try to access that resource using the ID from account A. If account B succeeds, your API has BOLA. Apply this test to every endpoint that accepts an object ID as a parameter. Automated tools like ApyGuard run this cross-user authorization test across all endpoints automatically.

What changed between OWASP API Security 2019 and 2023?

Three categories were added: Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows (API6), Server Side Request Forgery (API7), and Unsafe Consumption of APIs (API10). Two categories were merged: Mass Assignment and Excessive Data Exposure became Broken Object Property Level Authorization (API3). Two were dropped: Insufficient Logging & Monitoring and Injections. The 2023 edition reflects how API architectures evolved, more microservices, more third-party integrations, and more cloud-deployed infrastructure.

Does the OWASP API Security Top 10 apply to GraphQL APIs?

Yes. All ten categories apply to GraphQL. GraphQL-specific risks include: query batching bypasses rate limits on API2 (Broken Authentication), deeply nested queries enable resource exhaustion for API4, and introspection endpoints exposed in production fall under API8 (Security Misconfiguration). BOLA is particularly common in GraphQL because field-level authorization is easy to miss when building resolvers.

How often should I test for OWASP API vulnerabilities?

The practical answer is: every deployment. Running OWASP API security checks in CI/CD means every code change is tested before it reaches production. Supplement automated pipeline scanning with a manual penetration test once or twice a year to catch business logic vulnerabilities (API6, API10) that automated tools handle less well. If you're pursuing SOC2 or PCI DSS compliance, regular automated testing with reporting is typically a requirement, not just a recommendation.

Conclusion

The OWASP API Security Top 10 isn't a compliance checklist, it's a map of how real APIs get breached. Six of the ten categories involve attackers using valid credentials and making technically correct requests. That's why the question isn't whether your APIs can reject malformed input. It's whether they can distinguish between a legitimate user and an attacker who has valid authentication but is doing something they shouldn't be allowed to do.

The practical path forward:

Audit your current APIs against the checklist above, start with API1 (BOLA) and API2 (Broken Authentication), the two highest-risk categories
Add automated OWASP scanning to your CI/CD pipeline so every deployment is tested, not just an annual batch
Find shadow APIs with active discovery, you can't secure endpoints you don't know exist
Run a scan now to see where you currently stand

ApyGuard covers all ten OWASP API Security categories in automated scans that connect to your existing pipeline. Your first scan takes minutes, not weeks, and requires no code changes to your API.

Start your free OWASP API security scan, no credit card required.

Published by Eren Kaan Çakır, ApyGuard | April 2026

External sources: OWASP API Security Top 10 (2023), NIST SP 800-63B (Authentication Guidelines), CISA API Security Advisories

Back