Mamoon Yunus

API Security is complex. Vendors like Forum Systems, IBM, CA and Axway have invested almost two decades of engineering effort and significant capital in building API Security stacks to lockdown APIs. The API Security stack diagram shown below is a building block for rapidly locking down APIs. The four fundamental pillars of API Security - SSL, Identity, Content Validation and deployment architecture - are discussed in detail below. Here are four fundamental steps that an enterprise can take to ensure that their APIs attack surface area is significantly reduced. To implement API Security: Enable SSL: One can rapidly protect API traffic by enabling SSL and changing http to https. This is a good first step in protecting the traffic from an API consumer to an API producer, however, the following items should be considered in tightening secure API communication: Check X... (more)

API Security: OWASP 2017 RC1 Gets It Right | @CloudExpo #API #SOA #Microservices

API Security has finally entered our security zeitgeist. OWASP Top 10 2017 - RC1 recognized API Security as a first class citizen by adding it as number 10, or A-10 on its list of web application vulnerabilities. We believe this is just the start. The attack surface area offered by API is orders or magnitude larger than any other attack surface area. Consider the fact the APIs expose cloud services, internal databases, application and even legacy mainframes over the internet. What could go wrong? API Security has been added to OWASP Top 10 2017 - RC1. This is a commendable step... (more)

Why is a Cloud Gateway Required?

Gateway Sessions at Cloud Expo Security has been on the forefront of discussion in the technology community as being the primary concern gating enterprise adoption of cloud computing. Although this is a valid concern, most cloud providers, owing to the security demands of maintaining a multi-tenant infrastructure, provide strong security provisions, perhaps better than an enterprise's own data center. Legal, compliance and process issues become more significant rather than technical security concerns. Moving into 2010, reliability will be a higher concern for enterprises. Recent ou... (more)

Federated SOA: A Pre-Requisite for Enterprise Cloud Computing

According to Massimo Pezzini, VP and Gartner Fellow, "Federated SOA is a systematic approach to large-scale, enterprise wide SOA that enables organizations to integrate semi-independent SOA initiatives. Often used to fix an initial lack of coordination, federated SOA should be proactively pursued from the inception of major, strategic SOA initiatives." -- Divide and Conquer: Taming Complexity Through Federated SOA. Successful enterprise SOA implementations build on a set of localized, project-level efforts with services that have clearly identified and accountable business and te... (more)

Using SQL Azure for SOA Quality Testing

I. INTRODUCTION Throwing its hat in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) ring, Microsoft has joined the likes for Salesforce.com and Google with its annoucement of Microsoft Azure Platform. Microsoft Windows Azure Platform provides three primary components: Windows Azure: A cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. SQL Azure: A cloud hosted relational database that removes the burdens of RDBMS installation, patching, upgrades and overall software management for relational databas... (more)