Why Manual API Penetration Testing is Costing You a Fortune

Why is manual API penetration testing so costly? And is automated API pen testing more cost-effective???

Find the answers in this article.?

4 Reasons Why Manual API Pen Testing Is Expensive?

1. High Manual Penetration Test Price??

The average price of a manual API pen test can be as high as $25K per API application for one-time testing.??

However, today we face:?

• API sprawl?

• Tremendous expansion of the API attack surface?

• Dramatic increase in API attacks?

• Fast-paced software development?

• Strict compliance regulations??

And they all require a shift toward regular, frequent API pen testing.??

Hence, considering that your organization could be relying on tens or even hundreds of APIs, your costs for multiple per year manual API penetration tests quickly grow from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.?

2. Shift-Left, DevOps, and DevSecOps?

The current shift-left, DevOps, and DevSecOps approaches include agile development and quick dynamic deployment. As such, they require testing that goes beyond frequent, and that’s continuous security testing as part of the CI/CD pipeline.?

From this perspective, since APIs are also software components, API penetration testing must become a continuous process. As continuous testing requires continuous involvement on the pen tester's side, it incurs immense costs when done manually.?

3. Expertise or the Lack Thereof?

API penetration testing requires a specialized set of skills and hands-on experience that differ from the competencies and expertise of a web application pen tester.?

That makes API pen testers a rare breed in an area where there’s already a severe shortage of experts. And what’s extremely rare and in high demand is always expensive. In the case of API penetration testers, day rates range from $1000 to $3000.?

Regardless of whether you outsource API pen testing or build an in-house team of professionals, either strategy requires a substantial and willy-nilly ongoing investment.?

4. Time and Coverage

An Equixly’s 2023 study revealed that it takes more than 154 hours—20 working days—to test a typical API with 40 endpoints manually. Manual tests are not exhaustive, covering usually less than half of the perimeter.?

Since time is indeed money in the business realm, the costs of manual API penetration testing escalate sharply when you:??

• Test a large API application?

• Go in-depth by generating as many API sequences as possible???????

• Test the whole stack of your APIs, including undocumented or abandoned but not officially retired endpoints?

Is Automated API Penetration Testing More Cost-Effective??

Resounding yes. Automated pen tests:?

• Are cheaper both in time and money than manual tests????

• Are much faster because they’re performed by machines?

• Are effortless to integrate into the CI/CD pipeline?

• Were developed for continuous testing?

• Don’t depend on an individual’s expertise?

• Don’t require sophisticated technical skills to be run?

Equixly, the AI-Powered Penetration Tester?

Equixly is an API security platform that uses AI and ML to automate API penetration testing. It costs only a fraction of the price of manual API pen testing.?

Since Equixly is a specialized API security solution, it follows the OWASP API Security Top 10 Risks framework in its tests.

However, its capabilities of vulnerability detection go beyond the limited group of these ten security risks.?

Here’s some of what Equixly can do for you: ?

• Understand and generate API sequences.?

• Understand context, which allows you to find logic vulnerabilities in addition to technical security risks like server-side request forgeries.?

• Discover traces of zero days in your APIs.?

• Process large volumes of data in hours instead of days and weeks.?

• Find undocumented API endpoints.?

• Create exhaustive penetration test reports with proof of concept and remediation recommendations immediately after testing.?

An automated API penetration testing solution like Equixly is cost-effective, with an ROI much higher than manual API penetration testing.???

Book a demo to explore our feature set.