{"id":78596,"date":"2025-11-10T14:27:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=78596"},"modified":"2025-11-10T14:29:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:29:33","slug":"addressing-the-rising-risks-and-costs-of-an-explosion-of-apis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2025\/11\/10\/addressing-the-rising-risks-and-costs-of-an-explosion-of-apis\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing the rising risks and costs of an \u2018explosion\u2019 of APIs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CASA Software warns that the growing proliferation of APIs and increased AI adoption are creating escalating risks and costs for enterprises, calling for urgent improvements in API security and management.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An explosion of application programme interfaces (APIs) and growing use of AI is set to create significant headaches for enterprises in future unless they move to better secure the API layer and streamline API management.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

This is according to Michael Brink, CTO, CASA Software, who says that as organisations become increasingly dependent on a proliferation of APIs and AI adoption soars, managing the associated costs, security and governance risks is proving challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brink cites a 2025 API Security and Management Report<\/em> by Kuppinger Cole analysts, which finds that APIs are essential for intelligent digital enterprises, and the emergence of AI-native applications has accelerated adoption. The report notes that every LLM integration, Agentic AI workflow or autonomous decision system depends on API calls, and that most AI-related vulnerabilities, including prompt injection, data exfiltration or model abuse, are exposed through insecure APIs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAPIs essentially provide a window to your castle, so poorly secured APIs will allow threat actors easy access,\u201d he said. \u201cThere have been a number of hacking events purely via APIs \u2013 both globally and in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cManaging APIs is traditionally very technical, so you usually require quite a high level of technical ability and skill to use, consume and work with APIs, and to secure the APIs to prevent data leakage and threat actors from using them to access the organisation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brink notes that in many organisations, developers manage APIs, but their primary focus is not on security but on getting products to market. \u201cAs regulatory bodies turn their attention to API security, we will see more risk and security teams needing to take on this task.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simplifying API security and governance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Broadcom Layer7 API management platform offers an advanced, low-code solution to these challenges. Broadcom Layer7 has long been a market leader in API security, governance and control, with leading local financial services, retail and public sector organisations trusting it for over 15 years, Brink said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serving as a single security platform for all web services, APIs and application traffic, Layer7 enhances API security, with operational monitoring and cost management capabilities to simplify API management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you write programmes and develop applications, you typically write a lot of security code into that app or service, but every time you need to make a change or a vulnerability is discovered, you’re going to need to update those security routines,\u201d Brink said. \u201cThe Layer7 API management platform allows you to manage that in a very effective way by offering a central policy enforcement point. So, you can have ten thousand APIs or services published there and apply a specific policy to all of them at once.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He confirms that with Layer7, the security operations practice can secure and monitor APIs too, enabling better security enforcement and compliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Integrating DLP and cost management<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brink highlights that CASA also integrates data loss prevention with Layer7 to reduce the risk of sensitive information being leaked via public Generative AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLayer7 can help control and facilitate the interactions and secure the ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot API, while CASA has other data leakage capabilities which we integrate with Layer7 to help organisations effectively manage some of the risks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He adds that another growing challenge associated with AI is cost: \u201cThere is a cost involved in getting the information for large language models. Typically, an enterprise would buy an AI model that\u2019s hosted by a provider. You have your content in there, and to interact with the AI, you send the data via an API and it responds via that API,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith CASA and Layer7, you can set up quotas and implement a chargeback model at the API layer to control the costs of consuming AI services.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Layer7 also offers capabilities such as analytics and API operations management, so organisations can monitor how APIs are performing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLayer7 simplifies the management of every API from inception right through its lifecycle until it\u2019s retired,\u201d Brink concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CASA Software warns that the growing proliferation of APIs and increased AI adoption are creating escalating risks and costs for enterprises, calling for urgent improvements in API security and management. An explosion of application programme interfaces (APIs) and growing use of AI is set to create significant headaches for enterprises in future unless they move […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":78598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16131,15417,5,18023,136,15261,13],"tags":[19119,386,8888,17950,388,18262,19202],"class_list":["post-78596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","category-cybersecurity","category-enterprise-security","category-expert-opinion","category-industry-expert","category-strategy","category-top-stories","tag-api-security","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-broadcom","tag-casa-software","tag-cybersecurity","tag-digital-transformation-in-finance","tag-layer7"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78599,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78596\/revisions\/78599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}