API Security in the Cloud: Operationalizing NIST SP 800-228 with Radware – Part 2

How Radware empowers enterprises to adopt and scale NIST’s API security guidelines across cloud-native environments.

Introduction: From Guidelines to Execution

In Part 1, we explored the principles in NIST SP 800-228, “Guidelines for API Protection for Cloud-Native Systems.” While the standard provides the blueprint for API security, enterprises need practical ways to operationalize these controls across hybrid and cloud-native architectures.

Radware delivers this with a complete portfolio covering the API lifecycle: advanced API analytics for deep visibility, shift-left controls to build security into APIs before runtime, runtime and posture protection through WAAP and the innovative SecurePath, and continuous security posture management for ongoing risk assessment and compliance.

Radware Capabilities Mapped to NIST SP 800-228

Advanced API Analytics: Turning Data into Defense

Radware’s API analytics extend far beyond simple inventory, offering multi-dimensional insights into API ecosystems. The platform creates a graphical map that visualizes API flows, business processes, and endpoint dependencies, helping CISOs understand interactions and identify hidden risks. It delivers granular analytics on usage patterns such as traffic by countries, content types, request/response volumes, and error trends, allowing irregularities to be detected early. Performance metrics, including latency, throughput, and RPS, ensure SLAs remain secure and reliable. While per-endpoint visibility into OWASP API Top 10 violations, anomalies, and attempted exploits adds essential security intelligence. These capabilities transform APIs into a living, observable system, enabling CISOs to prioritize risks, detect anomalies early, and drive data-informed security decisions.

SecurePath: Beyond Inline, Beyond Runtime

Radware’s SecurePath is a breakthrough innovation that redefines how runtime protection and API security posture management (ASPM) are delivered. Unlike traditional inline tools, SecurePath requires no on-premise software installation and operates through lightweight configuration at integration points such as API gateways, service meshes, or load balancers. This architecture makes it possible to enforce Zero Trust validation, detect anomalies, and block threats without introducing latency or bottlenecks. At the same time, SecurePath enhances posture visibility by continuously monitoring configurations, uncovering risks, and flagging deviations from best practices. The result is a platform that delivers both real-time defense and continuous posture governance, giving CISOs seamless protection and compliance assurance without operational complexity.

Shift-Left Security: Building APIs Ready for Production

NIST emphasizes that API protection must begin in design and pre-runtime, not only after deployment. Radware enables this shift-left approach by allowing security policies to be created directly from posture insights, ensuring they reflect actual risks. These policies are then fine-tuned before runtime through schema validation, permission testing, and synthetic traffic simulation, helping to uncover weaknesses early. Once refined, the policies can be promoted into runtime—either automatically or with manual oversight—so that APIs enter production aligned with Zero Trust principles and ready to resist attacks. This model closes the gap between pre-runtime posture knowledge and runtime enforcement, embedding security into the CI/CD pipeline and ensuring APIs are secure by design.

Security Posture Management: Continuous Risk Awareness

The market increasingly recognizes API Security Posture Management (ASPM) as essential, and Radware delivers it as an integrated, end-to-end capability. Through continuous compliance validation, organizations can ensure ongoing alignment with GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and other mandates. Its misconfiguration detection identifies weaknesses such as missing authentication, weak tokens, over-permissive access, or untagged sensitive data. Each API and endpoint is then assigned a risk score, giving CISOs clear prioritization for remediation based on business impact. What makes Radware unique is the closed-loop integration of posture insights with analytics, shift-left controls, and runtime defenses—ensuring posture is not static but continually feeds back into prevention and protection. This transforms ASPM from a compliance checkbox into a strategic enabler of resilience and trust.