Securing RESTful APIs in Microservices Architectures: A Comprehensive Threat Model and Mitigation Framework
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63282/3050-922X.IJERET-V4I2P107Keywords:
RESTful APIs, API gateway, OAuth 2.0, service mesh, insider threats, input validationAbstract
Microservices architectures have become a norm in current software development since they facilitate the scalability and flexibility of systems. However, this shift has brought about new security risks, especially when protecting RESTful API, which is the communication bridge of the services. This paper proposes the threat model that focuses on the RESTful API in microservices environments, which may be threatened by broken authentication, injections, and insiders. Based on this threat model, several layers of protection are suggested, including strong authentication and authorization, protection of communication between services, input validation, rate limiting, and API gateway in the center. Such measures have been prosecuted in real-time examples and reveal the effectiveness of such an approach in most security anxieties and system frailty. The research also reviews industry trends and points at the ever-evolving security and the need to adopt AI security changes and quantum cryptography. In order to make continuous monitoring, automatic integration testing, and proactive security policy implementation towards vulnerability the key components of API protection in microservices, organizations must strengthen their security framework. This work fills the gap between security models at a high level and possibilities for the practical development of real-life scalable solutions based on the new paradigms of clouds and distributed applications
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