TL;DR: Modern web applications rely heavily on APIs to move data, power microservices, and connect AI agents to backend systems. But as API surfaces expand, so do attack surfaces. With Fastly API Security, you can keep track of what APIs are being called, validate live API traffic directly at the Fastly edge, enforce against your uploaded schema, and block non-conforming API requests before they reach your origin.
It's Time to Slay the API Dragon
We've heard loud and clear from our customers that they have a big monster to fight. They don't have full understanding and control over their APIs, especially with the increased use of AI by their developers.
API management challenges aren't a new curse, but the scope and severity of the problem has skyrocketed in recent years. Fastly research reveals that AI requests on the platform grew approximately 30% from January to May 2026 – roughly 6.5x faster than human traffic over that same window. What does that mean for your website? A horde of bots, scripts, and AI agents. 🤖 And it's no secret that AI has completely changed the game, particularly in the areas of agentic workflows (in other words, AI models interacting directly with other AI models via API connections).
Developers are using AI coding assistants to build essential functions, but they need to ensure that these time-saving hacks don't lead to shipping hallucinated API calls or data models, or that their applications don't run up an unexpectedly massive token budget. There are significant security issues at play too: LLMs and agents have the potential to scrape, exfiltrate, or even erase sensitive data, or gain unwanted access to resources (like unknown public API endpoints) before anyone knows what's happening. 😱 Security teams need to understand the scope and extent of their organizational AI usage and what it means for their risk profiles. These problems show no signs of slowing down, and our defenders could certainly use a long rest. 💤
Find the Right Tools for the Job
With so much reliance on AI, autonomous agents, and APIs, things can easily descend into total chaos. To keep things running smoothly, you need to reclaim control, and that means equipping yourself properly. That's where Fastly API Security can help.
Fastly API Security consists of two powerful and complementary components: API Discovery and API Enforcement.
API Discovery detects API traffic and builds your API inventory, along with the relevant business context you need to understand what's happening 🔎
API Enforcement gives you the power to validate every API request against your defined specifications and block any requests that do not meet your chosen criteria🚦
Together, they make up the ultimate dual-wield combination to better understand and control your APIs. ⚔️
Here's a step-by-step guide for what managing your API chaos might look like in practice:
You need to know what APIs you're dealing with, so you'll need a map. This means a complete inventory of what APIs exist in production and how they behave.
You need to develop specifications (or schema) with conditions for what the APIs should look like in your perfect world. Think of these like the laws of the land. A schema lays out the components, data types, and constraints of an acceptable API request.
You need to enforce the rules – once you've defined what API requests are acceptable, you need to deal with anything that doesn't meet your definition of acceptable. This is a highly customized quest for every organization, depending on your industry laws, regulatory pressures, and unique API use cases.
With the one-two punch of API Discovery and API Enforcement, you can achieve all of this and more!
The Battle is Long, but Victory is Within Reach
APIs change constantly, so it’s easy to lose track of what’s actually happening versus what you meant to happen. Understanding your API landscape isn't a one-and-done ritual. It needs to happen continuously and automatically, because you don't have endless time.
To succeed in your quest, you need a system to ensure that a defined API contract is a living, visible, and executable standard. The system needs to continuously check whether the structured data in an API request matches the "shape" described in the respective API schema, and can make decisions based on whether or not it matches. That system also needs to be flexible enough to support your business as it rapidly grows and evolves.
In an ideal world, you'd have some sort of magical item that gives you the power to:
🔮Gain true sight: Curate your full API inventory and track down shadow APIs
🧱Thwart invaders: Block unauthorized or malformed requests before they breach your perimeter
💎Preserve resources: Reject bad requests at the edge to save on origin bandwidth
📜Enforce sacred oaths: Uphold vendor contracts, compliance requirements, and SLA commitments
💪Empower your squad: Maintain stable integration experiences for your developer teams
Luckily, magic is real, and you're about to level up.
Upload schema to API Enforcement
Turn the Tide Against API chaos
Fastly API Security magic is simple, but powerful. 🪄
Discover and catalog your APIs with context, with just a simple toggle and no configuration necessary.
Upload your schema (JSON or YAML) and set your rules to log or block non-conforming requests. Assign operations in your API inventory to point to specific schemas and swap them on the fly.
Inspect incoming API calls across multiple parameters: domains, paths, in-path variables, HTTP methods, and custom query parameters.
Set allow/block actions per schema, per service, or per individual operation to prevent accidental friendly fire on legitimate traffic.
Gain insights into how your APIs are accessed by clients with relevant metrics and logging, and easily identify APIs without security coverage to prioritize your efforts.
View metrics in API Enforcement
And if you're interested in upgrading your armor? Fastly API Security is natively integrated into Fastly’s broader Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) platform, which unites powerful API security with Next-Gen WAF and Bot Management in a single workflow. But the choice remains yours – Fastly API Security is flexible enough to work in whatever existing WAAP infrastructure you use today. After all, what matters most is security that works within the context of your business.
Slaying monsters isn't easy, but with the right tools and knowledge, you can achieve anything. Take back control and give your developers the power to build safely in a land filled with AI terrors. Contact us to roll initiative and get started.