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Improper API Inventory Management incident response playbook · Cybersecurity Atlas
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Improper API Inventory Management API Security API9:2023 – Improper Inventory Management
Undocumented, deprecated, test, or shadow API deployments remain reachable without current security controls, exposing forgotten data paths and vulnerable versions.
1 Inventory externally reachable API hosts, routes, versions, and environments. 2 Disable abandoned deployments and place remaining legacy APIs behind current controls. 3 Review traffic and logs for use of undocumented or deprecated interfaces. 1
Maintain a versioned catalog with owner, data class, lifecycle, and schema.
2 Route APIs through managed gateways with consistent authentication and telemetry.
3 Publish deprecation dates and reject unsupported versions after the migration window. 1 Reconcile runtime discovery with source, gateway, and OpenAPI inventories. 2 Block unregistered production deployments through policy as code. 3 Assign lifecycle ownership and review exposure after every platform change. Calling deprecated API versions that lack current authorization or validation Discovering staging, beta, debug, or alternate-host endpoints Using undocumented methods or paths left by previous deployments Targeting services with stale schemas, dependencies, or gateway policies Traffic to endpoints absent from the current API specification Production DNS names or gateways routing to unsupported API versions Different authentication or header policies across versions and environments Repositories and deployments without an accountable API owner Nmap Amass OpenAPI Diff APIClarity
