What Is the Cost of an API Breach?

Since 2017, the number of API breaches has been growing substantially, virtually without stopping.?

As a result of this upward trend, today, we suffer an average annual API-related global loss of USD 35–87 billion.?

The risk of an API breach is proportional to the size of the organization. Large enterprises are most susceptible to API incidents, followed by mid-range and smaller enterprises.???

Those are the grim facts revealed in “The Economic Impact of API and Bot Attacks” 2024 report by Imperva.?

Types of API Breach Consequences??

The consequences of API breaches fall within 5 categories:??

1. Direct financial loss, such as theft of crypto/traditional currency and ransomware extortion following an exploited vulnerable API. An example is the Kronos Research hack, where a threat actor stole $26M in cryptocurrency.
2. Data/privacy exposure, such as scraped or leaked sensitive user data, such as phone and credit card numbers, and excessive data exposure in API responses. An example is the 2023 T-Mobile data breach, in which the company exposed the private data of 37M customers.
3. Operational disruption, such as forced service outages, such as power outages, and DDoS resulting from abused APIs. An example is the Apple API abuse, where a sneaker cook group sent more than 100 million malicious API requests during the launch of a new sneaker.
4. Supply chain risk, such as vulnerable integrations and lateral movement through third-party attacks. An example is the 2022 Sandworm attack in which the attackers used a third-party component (MicroSCADA X DMS600) in an electrical substation to open circuit breakers and cause a power outage.
5. Reputational damage, such as loss of trust, a lawsuit resulting from non-compliant APIs leaking data, and customer churn following a data breach. An example is the Optus data breach, in which the telco suffered lawsuits, non-compliance charges, and terrible reputational damage following the data theft that impacted over 11.2M customers.????

However, ultimately, all API breaches are translatable into indirect but still economic loss. An obvious example is high customer churn and the inability to gain a new customer base because of a ruined business reputation caused by private data exposure.???

Another important observation is that the different types of consequences of API breaches are often intertwined. An example would be highly publicized data exposure that leads to reputational damage and a fine for failing to protect your customers’ private data.????

Consequently, most of the time, when an API breach happens, you face multiple negative outcomes simultaneously.???

What Can Equixly Do for You??

Equixly is a specialized API security platform that:

• Supports your cybersecurity risk management efforts by finding and preventing vulnerabilities in development as well as production, thus eliminating the high costs of late-stage risk remediation.?
• Expedites your API inventory efforts by discovering and reporting undocumented API endpoints in your environment.??

Equixly's primary function is to protect you from suffering API security breaches. For that purpose, it developed a range of testing and posture functionalities, including: ??

• Proprietary AI engine used in security scanning and testing
• Automated CI/CD security testing
• Automated penetration testing
• Parameter linking????

• Visual API flow graph
• Business logic vulnerability detection
• Smart fuzzing

• Shadow API discovery

• Data classification??

• Granular security testing reports

Curious to see it in action? Get a free demo.

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