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Summary – APIs expose your systems to BOLA, injection attacks, data leaks, and GDPR/NIS2 requirements, while creating vendor lock-in if they’re not secured by design. Edana’s approach relies on versioned OpenAPI/AsyncAPI specs, OAuth2/OIDC with Keycloak, OPA-driven RBAC/ABAC, mTLS via service mesh, automated vaults, and DevSecOps pipelines (SAST/DAST, fuzzing, observability) to ensure scalability, resilience, and sovereignty.
Solution: API maturity audit, custom roadmap, and Edana support to deploy these open-source practices.
In the era of distributed architectures and inter-system exchanges, API interfaces are becoming a critical vector for organizations’ sovereignty and resilience. Ensuring their security from the outset addresses regulatory challenges (GDPR, NIS2) and emerging threats (BOLA, OWASP API Top 10) without relying on proprietary solutions.
The API-first and security-by-design approach leverages open-source standards and least-privilege principles, guaranteeing scalable, observable, resilient interfaces free from vendor lock-in. This article outlines the technical and organizational best practices for building sovereign API ecosystems, from versioned specifications to governance.
API-First Architectures for Enhanced Sovereignty
Versioned specifications provide an immutable contract between producers and consumers. They structure development and prevent compatibility breaks. Adopting OpenAPI or AsyncAPI streamlines integration, automatic documentation, and contract testing within CI/CD pipelines.
Versioned Specifications and Clear Contract
Defining an OpenAPI or AsyncAPI schema establishes the foundation for coherent and traceable development. Each update corresponds to a new specification version, ensuring backward compatibility.
Storing specifications in a Git repository allows tracking of evolution history and automates the generation of mocks or stubs for contract testing.
For example, a Swiss cantonal bank implemented versioned specifications for its inter-service flows, eliminating incidents caused by uncoordinated changes. This practice reduced API call rejections by 75%, demonstrating its direct impact on service reliability.
OpenAPI/AsyncAPI Standards and Modularity
The OpenAPI and AsyncAPI standards are renowned for their rich feature sets and compatibility with many open-source tools. They support modeling both REST endpoints and event brokers.
Thanks to these formats, development teams can decouple: each service can evolve independently as long as the contract is honored. This modularity strengthens digital sovereignty by avoiding vendor lock-in.
Automatically exporting specifications to developer portals encourages internal adoption and simplifies onboarding for new contributors.
Robust Authentication and Authorization with Open Standards
Using OAuth2 and OpenID Connect ensures centralized identity and token management. Keycloak, as an authorization server, issues standards-compliant tokens. RBAC and ABAC models define minimal access policies, limiting each token’s scope and reducing exposure to BOLA attacks.
OAuth2/OIDC with Keycloak
OAuth2 offers various flows (authorization code, client credentials) to meet the needs of web, mobile, or backend applications. OpenID Connect enriches OAuth2 with user claims.
Keycloak, an open-source solution, integrates user, role, and attribute management while providing native support for standardized protocols.
A Swiss healthcare organization consolidated its internal directory and externalized authentication via Keycloak. This overhaul eliminated ad-hoc implementations and reduced authentication-related tickets by 60%.
RBAC and ABAC for Fine-Grained Control
The RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) model assigns roles to users, simplifying the consistent granting of permissions across APIs.
ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control) refines this control by evaluating contextual attributes (time, location, request type), previously defined in declarative policies via OPA.
The combined RBAC/ABAC approach, driven by OPA (Open Policy Agent), enables dynamic access decisions and rapid adaptation to business changes.
Least-Privilege Policies and Isolation
Applying the principle of least privilege requires limiting each token’s lifespan, scope, and permissions.
Regular permission audits and security reviews ensure policies remain aligned with actual needs and regulatory context.
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End-to-End Encryption and Service Mesh for a Trusted Perimeter
Mutual TLS (mTLS) within a service mesh ensures authenticity and confidentiality of inter-service communications. Certificates are managed automatically to guarantee regular rotation. Service mesh solutions (Istio, Linkerd) provide a standardized control plane, ideal for enforcing network-level security policies without modifying application code.
mTLS and Service Mesh
Deploying a service mesh injects a sidecar proxy into each pod or instance, controlling connection establishment via mTLS.
Ephemeral certificates are generated by a control plane and deployed dynamically, enhancing resilience against local compromises.
Secrets Management and Encryption
Protecting keys and certificates requires vault solutions (HashiCorp Vault or equivalent open-source options) to ensure encryption at rest and governed access.
IaC pipelines automate the provisioning and rotation of secrets, avoiding hard-coded storage in Git repos or static configurations.
Centralizing secrets in a vault enabled a Swiss e-commerce platform to accelerate updates while reducing the risk of accidental key exposure by 100%.
Protecting Data in Transit
Beyond mTLS, it is essential to encrypt sensitive payloads (PII, financial data) using application-level or envelope encryption mechanisms.
Flow audits and targeted fuzz testing detect cases where archived data might transit in clear text or be altered.
DevSecOps Integration and Observability for Continuous Security
Integrating contract tests, SAST/DAST, and fuzzing into CI/CD pipelines ensures early vulnerability detection. Anomalies are identified before production. Enriched logging, metrics collection, and alerting via ELK, Prometheus, Grafana, or Loki provide proactive, measurable API posture monitoring.
Schema Validation and Continuous Fuzzing
Automated contract tests validate request and response compliance with OpenAPI/AsyncAPI specifications at each build.
Schema-driven fuzzing explores attack surfaces by simulating unexpected payloads to uncover injection or overflow flaws.
DLP and Rate Limiting at the Gateway
API gateways (Kong, Tyk, KrakenD) offer DLP plugins to detect and block unauthorized transfers of sensitive data.
Rate limiting protects against denial-of-service attacks and curbs abusive behavior, with thresholds adjustable based on the caller’s profile.
KPI and API Governance
Several indicators enable security posture management: mean time to detect (MTTD), anomaly detection rate, 4xx/5xx ratio, API churn, and proportion of public APIs.
Regular security reviews, coupled with an up-to-date API catalog, ensure ongoing alignment between business priorities and security policy.
In a project for a Swiss financial services provider, tracking these key performance indicators revealed friction points, enabling targeted cybersecurity resource allocation and continuous improvement.
Secure Your APIs by Design
API security starts at the architecture level: versioned specifications, OAuth2/OIDC, mTLS, service mesh, automated testing, and observability form a robust foundation. These open-source-based practices ensure scalability, resilience, and independence from vendors.
Clear governance, driven by precise metrics and least-privilege policies, maintains a strong posture against BOLA, injection, and exfiltration risks. Integrated into DevSecOps, these measures create a virtuous cycle between innovation and data protection.
Our experts are ready to assess your API maturity, define a contextual action plan, and secure your tailor-made digital ecosystem.
