Rapid7 Automates API Security Testing to Reduce Risk in Web Applications

PRESS RELEASE

Boston, MA – December 17, 2015 – Rapid7, Inc. (NASDAQ: RPD), a leading provider of security data and analytics solutions, today announced that AppSpider, its web application security testing solution, can now automate the testing of APIs documented in the Swagger format. The testing of APIs, which are increasingly a part of modern web applications and the Internet of Things (IoT), has been notoriously challenging for security professionals, as it previously required time consuming, manual testing efforts. Through this automation, Rapid7 is helping customers reduce the risk associated with their web applications and enabling IT security teams to manage resources more effectively. AppSpider is Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) software that assesses applications for vulnerabilities across modern technologies, provides tools that speed remediation, and monitors applications for changes. DAST solutions are a critical part of threat exposure management for security teams.

The millions of custom web, mobile, and cloud applications that companies deploy to serve their customers – now fueled in part by the popularity of IoT devices and services – have become a major channel of attack for malicious actors. The proliferation of these connected applications highlights the importance of effectively testing APIs: Interfaces that specify how program components should interact, which allow applications to talk to one another, both authorizing and exchanging information.  

“Given the current and growing popularity of APIs in web applications, it’s critical to automate testing to enable security teams to test as much as possible to reduce the risk of breach. This has traditionally been a challenge for DAST solutions as they were designed to crawl web pages and links, not test APIs,” said Lee Weiner, senior vice president of products and engineering at Rapid7. “The ability for AppSpider, with its Universal Translator, to analyze Swagger files for security vulnerabilities gives our customers a more efficient alternative to manually testing their APIs and, ultimately, the ability to identify issues much more quickly, test more regularly, and save significant resources – up to hours per API.”

Swagger helps organizations document APIs in a way that makes them readable by both humans and machines. It is this interactive documentation that allows for AppSpider to automate its analysis; AppSpider’s Universal Translator uses the documentation to translate the API into a standard format it can test.

AppSpider automatically finds vulnerabilities across a wide range of applications – ranging from the relatively simple to the highly complex – and allows teams to automate more of their security testing program across the entire software development lifecycle, from development through production. AppSpider scans traditional formats, including HTML, and its Universal Translator can interpret the new technologies being used in today’s web and mobile applications (AJAX, GWT, REST, JSON, etc.). 

AppSpider is part of Rapid7's integrated Threat Exposure Management offering, which helps organizations reduce their risk of a breach by providing information security teams with greater ability to assess risk in assets and applications across their entire ecosystem, from endpoint to cloud. Rapid7 solutions not only identify risk, but also apply context, automate attack simulations, and use analytics to prioritize and identify the most impactful actions customers can take to help reduce risk. Rapid7 analytics help enable security teams to achieve maximum impact in a world of limited resources.

About Rapid7

Rapid7 is a leading provider of security data and analytics solutions that enable organizations to implement an active, analytics-driven approach to cyber security. We combine our extensive experience in security data and analytics and deep insight into attacker behaviors and techniques to make sense of the wealth of data available to organizations about their IT environments and users. Our solutions empower organizations to prevent attacks by providing visibility into vulnerabilities and to rapidly detect compromises, respond to breaches, and correct the underlying causes of attacks. Rapid7 is trusted by more than 4,400 organizations across 90 countries, including 35% of the Fortune 1000. To learn more about Rapid7 or get involved in our threat research, visit www.rapid7.com.