API Gateways | A Critical Tool for Securing Public APIs
API management and inventory are an important part of web development, but it is a hard thing to do daily due to deadlines, operational burden, and team synergy. However, even with these obstacles, not paying attention to APIs used in an application can be a security disaster of great proportions.
In the last decade, many cases of ransomware, DDoS, hacking, and data leaking was performed by attackers due to the lack of API management and oversight. And those are only a few of many more reasons to use an API Gateway for web development.
API Gateways work as an intermediary between client applications and backend services inside a microservice architecture, a software layer that consolidates APIs used by an application in a single endpoint, providing centralized control, a clear overview, and organization, allowing developers to focus on the services.
To better understand an API Gateway, imagine an air traffic controller, who is responsible for all flights departing and arriving at the airport, and the pilots trust them to control the traffic, ensure that the pilot is in the right plane at the right time, coming and going, carrying the planned passengers to their previously arranged destination. This is very similar to the core of an API Gateway:
Ensure that the application resources are used properly
Prevent bottlenecks
Provide balance across requests of multiple instances and services
Maintain the reliability and scalability
Be a solid structure for the developers (or pilots in our analogy)
As an air traffic controller, the API Gateway is responsible for ensuring the authentication and authorization of the APIs for the applications. A designated pilot has his specific plane to fly; the same thing happens with an API: it must be allowed to be authorized and properly authenticated for specific applications.
It is also a great tool for logging and monitoring the API traffic, use, and errors, allowing cross-data analysis to understand odd behavior, anomalies, or even attack attempts, and is a good resource for telemetry for rate limiting according to data volume.
When an API has no oversight, no control, it can be exploited by a threat actor who can have access to it, and, consequently, to your application. Rate limit, for example, is a great security control, as it works as a barrier against DoS and DDoS, ceasing the attack atthe first clear sign of API request abuse.
Through API Gateways from cloud providers such as AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft), GCP (Google), and also free API Gateways as Kong (Lua), Gravitee (Java), Tyk (Go), among others, with pros and cons due to their versatility or more manual configuration needs, for those who want something different.
With them, it is possible to apply JWTs, API keys, OAUTH, rate limit, and other security mechanisms in a centralized and organized way, and also control the API versions to make sure that no outdated or vulnerable version is opened for exploitation.
References and sources
API Gateway controller tower and API hacker. Google Nano Banana.
MARJANOVIC, P. Air traffic controller from Switzerland's Skyguide working in the airport tower of Zurich. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. [cited 2026 Jan 28]. Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Air_traffic_controller_Skyguide_at_Airport_Zurich.jpg
