Layer7 API Security

Introduction:

In today’s online ecosystem, organizations must increasingly prioritize API security to meet ever-evolving regulatory standards. From General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), robust compliance protocols are essential for protecting user data and preventing breaches. Broadcom’s Layer7 API Gateway offers a broad range of tools and policies that can make achieving and maintaining compliance for your organization more manageable and effective.

In this post, we'll walk you through leveraging Broadcom’s Layer7 API Gateway to enhance API security compliance, covering key features and best practices for regulatory adherence, so that you understand how Layer7 may assist with your organization’s API Security requirements.

Understanding Compliance Requirements

Before diving into the specific tools available within the Layer7 API Gateway, let’s look at some specific requirements for the regulations you may need to follow:

1. GDPR: Requires data protection by design and demands that user data is kept secure and private, with strict access controls and regular auditing.
2. HIPAA: Enforces the protection of health information through encryption, access controls, and audit trails.
3. PCI-DSS: Focuses on securing payment information through encryption, strong authentication, and limited data exposure.

These regulations emphasize secure data handling practices, controlled access, data encryption, and detailed logging/auditing. Layer7 provides comprehensive features to help you implement these controls effectively.

Key Layer7 Features for Enhancing Compliance

Broadcom’s Layer7 API Gateway includes powerful capabilities to support your organization’s compliance and security best practices. Here are several key features and how they can contribute to your compliant API ecosystem:

1. Authentication and Authorization

Layer7 supports multiple authentication protocols such as OAuth, OpenID Connect and SAML. Properly authenticating your users when accessing data enabled by APIs ensures that only people you authorize have access to sensitive data, meeting compliance requirements for controlled access.

●       OAuth2 and OpenID Connect: Particularly useful for GDPR and HIPAA compliance, as they help secure APIs by enforcing strong, token-based access.

●       Policy-Based Access Control: Define roles and permissions to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. For example, only authorized healthcare providers may view protected health information (PHI) as per HIPAA regulations.

2. Data Encryption and Tokenization

To protect employee’s and customer’s data both in transit and at rest, Layer7 allows for seamless encryption and tokenization of sensitive data, helping to prevent exposure of sensitive information and ensure that unauthorized parties cannot read intercepted data (Think: Man-in-the-Middle Attack).

●       SSL/TLS Encryption: Enforce HTTPS connections for secure data transmission. This is a PCI-DSS and HIPAA requirement for protecting sensitive data accessed by your authorized users over networks.

●       Data Masking and Tokenization: Mask your user’s personal data, replacing it with tokens when data exposure isn’t required. This helps with GDPR compliance by keeping personally identifiable information (PII) secure.

3. Quota and Rate Limiting

API rate limiting and Quota Enforcement help protect your APIs from abuse, such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, which can lead to data breaches and compliance violations. These controls can be applied in your environment per API, User, or IP Address.

●       Rate Limiting: Limit the number of API requests within a specified time to prevent overwhelming a backend service.

●       Quota: Manage API performance, especially in scenarios involving payment data as outlined by PCI-DSS, by ensuring that services don’t get overloaded.

●       Distribution: Rate Limiting and Quota are automatically distributed across the entire Layer7 Infrastructure ensuring that load balanced Layer7 Gateways enforce the same Rate Limiting and Quota Policies across regions, networks and clouds.

4. Logging and Auditing

Compliance often mandates detailed logging of user activity, including access attempts, data retrievals, and modifications. Layer7 supports configurable logging and auditing, allowing your organization to maintain a full audit trail.

●       Audit Logs: These logs capture detailed information on user activity and API requests, necessary for HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliance.

●       Data Retention Policies: Establish retention policies for these logs to meet specific regulatory requirements, ensuring your auditor’s ability to gain access to the data needed to pass audits during set periods.

5. Intrusion Detection and Anomaly Detection

Detecting unusual activity on APIs can help prevent potential breaches and unauthorized access. Layer7 allows your administrators to monitor traffic for anomalies that may indicate an attack or suspicious activity.

●       Anomaly Detection Rules: Implement rules to detect unusual patterns, such as repeated failed login attempts or unusual data access requests.

●       Alerting and Response: Set up alerts for specific security events, ensuring  your security teams are immediately informed of potential security issues that could lead to non-compliance.

6. Consent Management

For GDPR and similar regulations, it’s crucial to obtain and manage user consent for data processing. Layer7 offers tools to handle user consent, including policies that require consent before data can be accessed or shared by your customers or employees.

●       Consent Collection and Management: Use Layer7 to require user consent for accessing sensitive data, such as PII, thereby ensuring data access aligns with user permissions.

●       User Revocation of Consent: Allow your users to revoke their consent, which is particularly important for GDPR compliance. Layer7 can help configure automated responses for such requests.

Building a Compliance-Driven API Strategy with Layer7

Implementing compliance features can be a complex task, but with a clear strategy, Layer7’s robust features can simplify the process for your organization:

1. Identify and Map Data: Know where your sensitive data resides and ensure that the appropriate policies are applied by the Gateway to protect this data.
2. Automate Policy Enforcement: Leverage Layer7’s policy engine to automate compliance-related policies across all APIs, ensuring consistent application across your organization.
3. Regularly Review and Update Security Policies: Compliance is an ongoing process, so regularly audit and update your policies to reflect the latest regulatory changes and security best practices.
4. Document Everything: Create detailed documentation of your API security policies and procedures, as regulators often require this information during audits. Layer7 makes this process easier by allowing you to “self-document” the security policies directly within the policy.

Conclusion

The Broadcom Layer7 API Gateway provides essential tools for ensuring that your API infrastructure meets the demanding requirements of modern security and privacy regulations. From robust access controls to encryption and consent management, the Gateway’s features allow organizations to build compliant APIs without sacrificing performance or flexibility.

Broadcom’s Layer7 API Gateway helps you to streamline your path to compliance while protecting user data, maintaining trust, and avoiding the hefty fines associated with regulatory violations. For any organization relying on APIs to deliver services, Layer7 offers the security foundation needed to stay compliant and secure in a data-driven world.