2024 SC Awards Finalists: Best API Security Solution

Cequence Unified API Protection (UAP) provides a comprehensive solution for securing an organization’s entire API attack surface. As APIs now drive a significant portion of organizational revenue and internet traffic, traditional security measures often fall short, leaving critical vulnerabilities exposed. Cequence UAP addresses these challenges by offering complete visibility, continuous discovery, and protection across all APIs, including those that are often overlooked by fragmented security solutions.

The platform integrates autonomous discovery, real-time risk assessment, and machine learning-powered defenses to safeguard against a wide range of threats, including those outlined in the OWASP API Security Top 10. By unifying API discovery, compliance, and protection, Cequence reduces security risks and operational costs, eliminating the need for third-party tools. The platform’s ability to seamlessly integrate with existing systems and handle high-scale operations makes it an essential tool for organizations prioritizing digital security.

With a robust customer base that includes Fortune/Global 500 companies, Cequence’s UAP has demonstrated its effectiveness by protecting over $10 trillion in assets and securing three billion user accounts globally. The platform’s innovative use of generative AI and no-code automation, combined with ongoing threat intelligence from the CQ Prime research team, sets a new standard in API security, offering unparalleled protection and significant return on investment.

F5 Distributed Cloud API Security provides enterprise-grade, full-lifecycle API protection for organizations operating in hybrid and multicloud environments. With the increasing threat of logic-based attacks targeting APIs, F5 offers comprehensive security that spans from code development through production, ensuring continuous monitoring, governance, and protection. Leveraging AI/ML-powered detection, the solution integrates API discovery, testing, and security directly into the CI/CD pipeline, while also offering robust “shield right” capabilities to safeguard APIs in production.

This SaaS-based solution is delivered through F5’s global network, enabling seamless scalability and centralized management without the need for additional hardware or complex integrations. It provides 360-degree visibility, leveraging traffic analysis and domain scanning to detect and mitigate API threats, including Zero Day and unknown exploits. The platform also streamlines inventory management, policy enforcement, and compliance tracking, ensuring protection against all API vulnerabilities.

F5 Distributed Cloud API Security is seeing strong market adoption, with a 75% year-over-year increase in subscriptions. It has successfully secured 90 billion API requests and mitigated 96 million attacks. Offering predictable, cost-effective pricing, the platform reduces TCO while delivering comprehensive API security for applications deployed across any environment, supporting organizations’ innovation and operational agility.

Imperva API Security addresses the growing challenges of securing rapidly deployed APIs that are expanding the attack surface of modern applications. As organizations struggle to keep up with frequent API changes, Imperva provides continuous discovery and classification of APIs, offering complete visibility into both traditional and microservice architectures. This comprehensive approach allows businesses to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape by automatically identifying sensitive APIs and integrating with Advanced Bot Protection to prioritize high-risk endpoints.

Imperva API Security is designed to protect against the full spectrum of OWASP API Security Top 10 threats, with features like API Verification and integration with Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) agents that enhance security both in pre-production and production environments. By automating risk assessments and enforcing policies on high-risk APIs, Imperva helps organizations mitigate the risk of API abuse, reducing costs associated with API Denial of Service attacks and other malicious activities.

With a customer base that grew by 125% in 2024, Imperva continues to innovate with regular feature updates and a responsive development approach. The platform’s ability to deliver proactive security measures without disrupting development workflows makes it an essential tool for organizations looking to secure their API ecosystems while supporting ongoing application modernization.

The Salt Security API Protection Platform is a leading solution designed to secure APIs, which are central to modern applications and increasingly targeted by sophisticated attacks. Salt’s patented platform uniquely combines cloud-scale big data with advanced AI/ML algorithms to detect and prevent API attacks in real-time. By correlating activities across millions of APIs and users over time, Salt provides deep contextual insights and continuous monitoring, addressing vulnerabilities including those listed in the OWASP API Security Top 10.

Salt Security is the only platform capable of capturing and analyzing all API traffic — calls and responses — over extended periods, providing unmatched visibility into “low and slow” attacks that on-premises solutions miss. The platform also introduces the industry’s first API posture governance engine, ensuring that API assets are governed and secured consistently across an organization’s entire ecosystem.

With a rapidly growing customer base, including Fortune/Global 500 companies, Salt has doubled its clientele and driven a 124% net dollar retention rate in the past year. The platform integrates seamlessly into existing DevSecOps and security workflows, delivering fast time to value and reducing API-related security costs. Salt continues to innovate, with recent advancements including OAuth threat detection, ensuring comprehensive API protection and operational simplicity for its global customers.

StackHawk is revolutionizing API security by empowering developers to take control of vulnerability testing during the software development process. Unlike traditional security tools that focus on post-production monitoring, StackHawk enables developers to identify and fix vulnerabilities early in the development cycle, significantly reducing time spent on triaging bugs found later. This proactive approach bridges the gap between security and engineering teams, allowing for seamless integration into existing workflows, including CI/CD pipelines.

StackHawk’s platform is designed for modern engineering teams, offering developer-centric API security testing across various protocols such as GraphQL, SOAP, REST, and gRPC. With the introduction of API Discovery powered by HawkAI, StackHawk provides security teams with a comprehensive view of their attack surface, uncovering previously untested assets. This AI-driven solution enhances collaboration between security and development teams, ensuring faster, more secure code delivery.

By offering a cost-effective pricing model based on the number of code contributors rather than applications, StackHawk ensures predictability in security budgets. The platform integrates with tools like Jira and SAST solutions, supporting a holistic view of vulnerabilities. StackHawk is continually updated, keeping pace with the evolving needs of developers and the growing cybersecurity landscape, making it an essential tool for modern application security.