APIs power today’s digital economy, but their lightning-fast evolution and astronomical call volumes can leave security teams scrambling to keep up. How can you secure what you can’t yet see or quantify? Imperva’s Unlimited Discovery-Only capability for the Cloud WAF (CWAF) add-On delivers continuous, comprehensive visibility into your entire API landscape without requiring up-front commitment to full-scale inspection or enforcement.
But this add-on is only the beginning of your API security journey—a strategic foothold that not only solves visibility gaps but also sets the stage for robust protection against the most dangerous API threats.
The API Visibility Gap
- Unpredictable Volumes, Uncertain Spend
Modern applications routinely generate billions of API calls every month. Traditional pricing models tie cost directly to the volume of calls inspected, so any initial attempt at discovery risks a budget blowout. That uncertainty stalls projects and stalls security. - The “Unknown Unknowns” Problem
Without continuous discovery, APIs spin up and evolve on a daily or even hourly basis. Static inventories quickly go stale, and manual discovery processes struggle to keep pace with rapid deployments. - Incomplete Discovery → Incomplete Security
Without a clear inventory of all active APIs, it’s impossible to prioritize risk, enforce policies, or measure exposure effectively. Gaps in visibility undermine every subsequent security control.
Introducing Unlimited Discovery-Only Add-on for Cloud WAF
Unlimited Discovery-Only decouples API visibility from inspection, enabling organizations to:
- Catalog Every API—Automatically
Leverage smart sampling techniques reveal 100% of your API endpoints, even in environments that generate massive volumes of calls. No endpoint is too small or too new to escape detection.
- Data Classification — Focus on What Matters
Automatically tag APIs based on the data they handle (PII, payment info, health records, IP, etc.), so your team can focus on assessing and protecting the most sensitive APIs first. That focused approach means faster risk assessments, more effective policies, and a tighter security posture—without burning cycles on low-priority traffic.
- Maintain Continuous Insight
Set discovery to run constantly, surfacing new and modified APIs as they appear. Whether you deploy weekly feature releases or hotfixes on the fly, your inventory stays up to date.
- Accelerate Your Security Maturity
Start with discovery to build a trusted inventory, then layer in risk assessment and policy enforcement when you’re ready following a phased “Discover → Assess → Mitigate” approach that aligns to your team’s capacity and priorities.
A Strategic Foothold—Not a Finish Line
Unlimited Discovery-Only is your entry ticket, not the endgame. It delivers the visibility and control you need right away and then hands you the roadmap to strengthen your APIs against advanced threats:
- Control and Prioritize: With full visibility, you can accurately classify and rank endpoints by risk, focusing resources on where they matter most.
- Integrate with DevSecOps: Keep CI/CD pipelines informed with an always-fresh API inventory, ensuring security keeps pace with development.
- Lay the Foundation for Advanced Protections: Once discovery is in place, seamlessly add risk assessment, schema enforcement, data classification, custom threat signatures, and more.
From here, Imperva’s complete API Security suite steps in to guard against business logic attacks (BOLA), OWASP Top 10 API threats, account takeover, data exfiltration, and emerging vulnerabilities, all enforced in real time.
Why Now?
- Hyper-Accelerated Digital Transformation
As organizations double down on cloud and microservices architectures, the number and complexity of APIs grow exponentially. Proactive discovery is critical to stay ahead of potential gaps. - DevSecOps and Continuous Delivery
Security must be embedded into every phase of development. Continuous API discovery ensures that security teams and developers are always aligned on what is in production. - Regulatory and Compliance Demands
Data privacy regulations require detailed visibility into data flows. Unlimited Discovery provides the comprehensive inventory you need for audits and compliance reporting.
Next Steps
- Enable Unlimited Discovery-Only in Your CWAF Dashboard
A simple configuration toggle activates always-on API discovery across your environment. - Review Your API Inventory Reports
Collaborate with stakeholders to map critical endpoints, classify sensitive data flows, and identify unmanaged or unexpected APIs. - Plan Your Phased Security Rollout
Use discovery insights to scope risk assessments, define enforcement policies, and integrate advanced protections, moving from discovery to assessment to mitigation.
Conclusion
In a world where APIs drive every digital interaction, visibility is the foundation of security and Unlimited Discovery-Only for the CWAF Add-On is your strategic starting point. It not only solves visibility gaps, but also gives you control over your entire API estate and paves the way to comprehensive protection against BOLA, OWASP Top 10 API threats, and beyond. Begin with visibility, then let Imperva’s full API Security suite defend what you discover.
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