Press enter or click to view image in full size

Member-only story

Secure Your APIs with Authentication, Rate Limiting, and Audit Logs

Protect web services with practical patterns for tokens, permissions, throttling, and security monitoring.

Muhammad Qasim

13 min read2 hours ago

An API can work exactly as expected and still be dangerously insecure.

Your login endpoint returns a valid token. Your backend checks that token on every request. Your database uses parameterized queries. Everything looks reasonable during development.

Then someone discovers that changing /api/orders/1042 to /api/orders/1043 exposes another customer's order.

The token was valid. The request was authenticated. The application still leaked private data.

This is the uncomfortable part of API security: proving that a request comes from an authenticated user does not prove that the user should be allowed to perform the requested action.

Authentication is one layer.…