API security relies on visibility. The biggest failure mode in most applications isn’t missed vulnerabilities, it’s missed APIs.

API Security Inventory provides a comprehensive, up-to-date catalog and risk assessment of all API endpoints and services in your environment.

Inventory is comprised of explorers that correspond to distinct layers in the API security lifecycle:

1. API Endpoints: What APIs exist, and what risk do they expose?

   Each API endpoint is a unique entry point where data or functionality can be accessed. The API Endpoints explorer enables shadow API (undocumented endpoints with no API definition and not detected from Amazon API Gateway) and orphan API (documented endpoints without traffic) detection, asset management, and risk prioritization at the granularity attackers exploit.

2. Services: Where do risky APIs live, who owns them, and how severe is their collective risk?

   A service groups multiple endpoints into a logical or deployed component (typically aligned with a microservice, app, or backend system).

3. API Findings: Which API weaknesses, attacks or misconfigurations require investigation or remediation?

   API Findings are security detections and policy evaluation results tied to endpoints. These represent known or inferred weaknesses or threats in API behavior or configuration.

These explorers correspond to the common API security operational flow:

1. Discover: Identify what endpoints exist using API Endpoints.
2. Contextualize: Identify ownership and dependencies using Services.
3. Detect and respond: See where misconfigurations are, and where attacks could occur, using API Findings.

API Endpoints

API Endpoints monitors your API traffic to provide visibility into the security posture of your APIs, including:

• Authentication: Whether the API enforces authentication.
• Authentication Method: Type of authentication used, such as Basic Auth and API key.
• Public Exposure: Whether the API is processing traffic from the internet.
• Sensitive data flows: Sensitive data handled by the API and flows between APIs.
• Attack Exposure: If the endpoint is targeted by attacks.
• Business Logic: Business logic and associated business logic suggestions for this API.
• Vulnerabilities: If the endpoint contains a vulnerability (powered by Code Security and Software Composition Analysis).
• Findings: Security findings identified on this API.
• Dependencies: APIs and Databases the API depends on.

Using API Endpoints you can:

• See which endpoints process sensitive data, are authenticated, have vulnerabilities or findings, or are publicly available.
• See which endpoints are at risk, and pivot directly into the Threat Monitoring and Protection service for further investigation or response.
• See which endpoints are associated to your business’s logic, and find business logic suggestions based on your endpoint’s traffic history.

Configuration

To view API Endpoints on your services, you must have App and API Protection Threats Protection enabled.

For Amazon Web Services (AWS) API Gateway integration, you must set up the following:

• Amazon Web Services
• Amazon API Gateway Integration

API Endpoints are discovered from the Datadog Software Catalog and specifically from API definitions uploaded to Datadog.

For information on what library versions are compatible with API Security Inventory, see Enabling App and API Protection. Remote Configuration is required.

Note: On .NET Core and .NET Fx tracers, you need to set the environment variable DD_API_SECURITY_ENABLED=true for API Security features to work properly.

How it works

API Endpoints gathers security metadata about API traffic by leveraging the Datadog tracing library with App and API Protection enabled, alongside configurations from Amazon API Gateway and uploaded API Definitions. This data includes the discovered API schema, the types of sensitive data (PII) processed, and the authentication scheme in use. The API information is continuously evaluated, ensuring a comprehensive and up-to-date view of your entire API attack surface.

API Endpoints uses Remote Configuration to manage and configure scanning rules that detect sensitive data and authentication.

The following risks are calculated for each endpoint.

Data sources

In the API Endpoints explorer, the Data Sources show where visibility originates.

The following data sources are explored.

Amazon API Gateway

The Amazon API Gateway service formally defines your API structure. Datadog AWS integration reads this pre-defined configuration from the Amazon API Gateway, and then Datadog uses this configuration to create API endpoint entries in Inventory.

Use AWS API Gateway in Data Source to gain visibility into these exposed endpoints. You can also use the query datasource:aws_apigateway.

Software Catalog

The Software Catalog data source shows API endpoints that Datadog learned about from the formal specification uploaded to Datadog. The API specification is attached to, or registered as, a dedicated API component within the IDP service entity.

This source ensures that your API inventory is complete by including all planned and formally documented endpoints.

APM traces

The Spans data source shows real traffic and data exposure. Remediation should be performed in code, config, or access controls immediately.

What actions you take depend on each of the attack surfaces:

• Vulnerabilities: Patch any vulnerable libraries surfaced by SCA or Runtime Code Analysis, then redeploy the service.
• API findings discovered: Review each issue in context of the traced service, fix any code or configurations, and then validate using new traces.
• Processing sensitive data: Confirm data handling complies with policy, sanitize or encrypt PII, and limit access to necessary services.
• Unauthenticated endpoint: If the endpoint is not intentionally public, enforce authentication and update service configurations.

Processing sensitive data

App and API Protection matches known patterns for sensitive data in API requests and responses. If it finds a match, the endpoint is tagged with the type of sensitive data processed.

The matching occurs within your application, and none of the sensitive data is sent to Datadog.

Supported data types

To see the supported data types, use the Personal Information (PII) facet. You can also see the data type used in the Sensitive Data column.

Business logic

These tags ((users.login.success, users.login.failure, etc.) are determined by the presence of business logic traces associated with the endpoint.

Publicly accessible

Datadog marks an endpoint as public if the client IP address is outside these ranges:

• 10.0.0.0/8
• 172.16.0.0/12
• 192.168.0.0/16
• 169.254.1.0/16

See Configuring a client IP header for more information on the required library configuration.

Endpoint authentication

Authentication is determined by:

• The presence of Authorization, Token or X-Api-Key headers.
• The presence of a user ID within the trace (for example, the @usr.id APM attribute).
• The request has responded with a 401 or 403 status code.

When the type of authentication is available, Datadog reports it in a header through the Authentication Method facet.

Supported authentication methods

Services

The Services explorer shows where findings from API Endpoints, vulnerabilities, and runtime signals converge by service. Consider it the operational risk view of your applications.

Review your services for the following:

• Vulnerability risk: The Vulnerability Risk column shows aggregated SCA and IAST results for each service. Vulnerable services have components needing patching or upgrading.
• Signals and attacks: Click a service to see charts showing ongoing detections for active exploit attempts or recurring attack patterns.
• Sensitive data exposure: Services processing PII (such as SSNs or emails) demand stricter controls and monitoring.
• Coverage and mode: Use the App & API Protection In Monitoring Mode, App & API Protection In Blocking Mode, and the Inactive facet to identify where App and API Protection is enabled and enforcing runtime protection.
• Trend graphs: The Trend column indicates activity and attack frequency over time.

Coverage

The Coverage column shows the active protection and analysis capabilities for each service. Use Coverage to measure the completeness of your protection stack.

For example, here are some use cases for Coverage:

• Runtime protection coverage with App and API Protection:
  • Identify the services in Monitoring or Blocking mode.
  • Move ready-to-block services into blocking mode to actively stop attacks.
  • Investigate inactive services to see if instrumentation or configuration gaps are leaving APIs exposed.
• Software Composition Analysis (SCA) coverage:
  • Track the services with analyzed open source dependencies.
  • Enable SCA for unscanned services to detect vulnerable libraries early.
  • Prioritize patching inactive services with high dependency risk.
• Runtime Code Analysis (IAST) coverage:
  • Pinpoint where code-level vulnerability detection is missing.
  • Enable IAST for production or high-risk apps to uncover exploitable issues in live traffic.
  • Use results to confirm whether library vulnerabilities are actually reachable in code.

API Findings

API Findings provides a central triage view of all detected API risks across definitions, gateways, and live traffic. It provides a set of default rules to detect common vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. You can also set up custom rules to adapt to specific use cases.

API Findings columns:

• Severity: Each issue is ranked by risk.
• Endpoints: Shows how many endpoints are affected and their services.
• Status and Ticketing: Open or In Progress tracks remediation progress and workflow integration.

Use the Service facet to see each service’s endpoints to identify ownership and prioritize by business impact.

Common operations

Click a finding to view its details and perform a workflow such as Validate > Investigate > Fix > Track:

1. Validate:
   • Review What Happened and Detected In to ensure the detection is accurate (service, endpoint, method).
   • In Next Steps, choose whether to Mute, Create Ticket, or Run Workflow depending on ownership and impact.
2. Investigate:
   • Use the Context tab to examine the endpoint snapshot and attributes (method, path, authentication flags, tags).
   • Dectected In provides information for routing ownership and remediation.
   • In Detection Rule Query, you can edit an API finding rule by clicking See Detection Rule.
3. Fix:
   • Follow the guidance under Remediation.
4. Track:
   • Use Create Ticket to link the issue to your tracking system.
   • Use Reference Links for developer education or code review.

Further reading

お役に立つドキュメント、リンクや記事:

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