APIs are the foundation of modern software ecosystems, facilitating seamless communication between applications and services. But with that connectivity comes risk—unauthorized access, misconfigurations, data exposure, and potential breaches. In fact, in 2023, cyber attacks targeting the business logic of APIs accounted for 27% of all API attacks. 

To stay ahead, organizations need more than just visibility; they need actionable insights that highlight where their APIs may be exposing them to threats. That’s where Sweet’s API Security comes in. Sweet provides a comprehensive, structured view of all API activity, helping security and engineering teams quickly identify and mitigate risks before they escalate.

Sweet’s API Security: Building Trust, One API at a Time

Layer 7 visibility is essential for effective API security because it lets you see beyond network traffic into how your APIs truly behave. Without it, you’re missing critical insights—exposing blind spots attackers can exploit. That’s exactly what Sweet strives to provide: deep, application-layer visibility that helps you detect risks, spot anomalies, and secure your APIs where it matters most.

Sweet’s API Catalog helps security teams understand their API landscape with two key views:

1. Organized API Inventory – APIs are categorized by endpoints or resources, making it easy to track access patterns and usage.
2. Risk-Based Insights – Built-in analytics highlight anomalies, misconfigurations, and potential attacks based on API behavior.

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Let’s dive into real-world security challenges the API Catalog can help solve.

1. Detecting Unintended Access to Sensitive Resources

Organizations often expose APIs that interact with cloud storage (e.g., S3 buckets, databases, or file repositories) without realizing they lack proper security controls. APIs that allow unauthenticated access, excessive permissions, or exposure of sensitive data can lead to unauthorized data access or even a breach.

Use Case: Find APIs accessing specific services, like S3 buckets, that contain sensitive data.

How Sweet Helps:

• The API Catalog lets you search and filter by service type, instantly revealing endpoints that interact with cloud storage, databases, or other sensitive resources.
• Identify whether the requests are unauthenticated, excessive, or coming from external sources.
• Flag risky access patterns before they lead to data exposure or compliance violations.

Example: A misconfigured API unintentionally allows public access to a storage bucket containing user records. Sweet detects this and highlights the misconfiguration so security teams can restrict access immediately.

2. Identifying APIs with High Error Rates (Financial & Operational Risks)

APIs powering payment processing, financial transactions, or critical business functions need to operate with high reliability. If an API starts returning a high percentage of errors, it can indicate a misconfiguration, failing integration, or an active attack. These failures can impact revenue, user experience, or security.

Use Case: Pinpoint endpoints with a high percentage of errors, especially those tied to financial transactions.

How Sweet Helps:

• The API Catalog tracks API performance metrics, including error rates, latency, and failed transactions.
• Security and engineering teams can sort by endpoints with the highest error percentage, helping them prioritize fixes.
• High error rates in payment APIs? That could indicate an integration failure, an attack attempt, or a business-impacting outage.

Example: A fintech company using Sweet’s API Catalog discovers that a key payment processing endpoint is returning a large number of 5xx errors—suggesting a potential misconfiguration or abuse.

3. Detecting Potential API Attacks with ADR

Public-facing APIs are frequent targets for attacks like credential stuffing, brute force attempts, and automated scraping. If an API is experiencing a high number of requests combined with a high error rate, it could indicate an attacker attempting to exploit vulnerabilities, overwhelm services, or steal data.

Use Case: Spot external-facing APIs with a high number of requests and error rates, which could indicate an attack in progress.

How Sweet Helps:

• Sweet automatically highlights anomalies, such as APIs experiencing a surge in traffic and errors.
• Distinguish between expected usage spikes and potential API abuse, such as credential stuffing or denial-of-service attempts.
• Security teams can set alerts for unusual request patterns, helping them respond to threats in real time.

Example: A sudden increase in traffic to a login API with a high failure rate? That’s likely an automated attack attempting to brute-force credentials. Sweet helps flag and mitigate these risks early.

4. Identifying APIs Transmitting Sensitive Data Externally

Many organizations integrate with third-party services via APIs, but they don’t always have visibility into what data is being transmitted. If sensitive information (e.g., user credentials, personal identifiers, financial records) is sent externally—especially unencrypted—it creates a major compliance and security risk.

Use Case: Find external API requests transmitting sensitive data, such as user credentials, personal identifiers, or financial records.

How Sweet Helps:

• The API Catalog labels API calls based on data sensitivity, helping teams spot potential data leaks.
• Detect API requests transmitting unencrypted credentials or sending sensitive data to external services.
• Identify APIs that violate compliance policies like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS.

Example: A company discovers that a third-party API integration is unknowingly sending unencrypted customer emails to an external analytics service—violating internal security policies.

5. Preventing Unauthorized AI API Access from Internal Services

Many companies integrate AI APIs into their applications—whether for automated decision-making, predictive analytics, or customer interactions. These APIs often process sensitive business data and generate critical outputs, making unauthorized internal access a major security risk. 

If an internal service—or worse, a compromised or misconfigured application—starts making unexpected calls to an AI API, it could lead to:

• Shadow AI Usage – Unauthorized internal tools or developers leveraging AI models without security approvals.
• Data Access Violations – Internal applications extracting customer or business-critical data that they shouldn’t have access to.
• Excessive API Costs – Unmonitored AI API usage leading to unexpected financial losses due to unnecessary processing.
• AI Model Manipulation – Internal services injecting unexpected inputs into AI APIs, leading to corrupted results or biased outputs.

Use Case: Detect unauthorized AI API access from internal applications or services.

How Sweet Helps:

• Identify Internal API Misuse – Monitor which applications are making AI API requests, ensuring only approved services can interact with AI models.
• Detect Data Access Violations – Flag sensitive AI-related requests that should be restricted to specific teams or use cases.
• Monitor for Model Manipulation – Identify unusual API inputs that could result in biased, inaccurate, or dangerous AI-generated responses.
• Track AI API Costs & Usage Patterns – Ensure AI models are being used efficiently and securely, preventing unexpected expenses.

Example: A marketing automation tool inside a company starts making an unusually high number of requests to an internal AI-powered pricing model. These calls weren’t approved and are accessing business-sensitive data. Sweet detects the unexpected API usage, allowing the security team to block unauthorized access before sensitive information is exposed or the AI model is misused.