Introducing APIs and API Security

Skillsoft issued completion badges are earned based on viewing the percentage required or receiving a passing score when assessment is required. Application programming interfaces (APIs) have exploded in popularity and importance in recent years, driven by the rise of cloud computing, container-based applications, and microservices architectures. APIs are a perfect basic conceptual building block for such architectures, and so each of the big three cloud platforms - AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud - has several services that provide support for APIs. In this course, you will learn about APIs and how they facilitate communication between software systems through structured requests and responses. You will define APIs as interfaces for software interaction, understand the basic request-response model and explore the key benefits of using APIs. You will also cover API design best practices, focusing on creating scalable, secure, and efficient APIs. Next, you will explore different types of APIs, evaluate SOAP APIs, and analyze GraphQL and gRPC. You will understand how API gateways facilitate routing, security, and traffic management and how serverless computing services like AWS Lambda and Azure Functions enable you to run APIs without managing infrastructure. Finally, you will explore API security best practices and common vulnerabilities, review the OWASP API Security Top 10 for 2023, and learn when and how to implement API versioning and API testing.