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Articles by Tim Erlin
Stop Reviewing Your AI Agents. Start Governing Them.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Wallarm authored by the team. Read the original post at: https://lab.wallarm.com/stop-reviewing-your-ai-agents-start-governing-them/ Brookings and the World Economic Forum say agent governance must be continuous, scoped in advance, evidenced, and monitored at runtime. We think that bar is correct, and that most organizations are nowhere near it. Most of what companies call AI agent governance today is paperwork.
You Can’t Secure the AWS Accounts You Don’t Know About.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Wallarm authored by the team. Read the original post at: https://lab.wallarm.com/aws-asset-discovery-attack-path-analysis/ Ask an AWS security team how many accounts they run, and the honest answer is usually a range. Enterprises on AWS operate anywhere from 100 to 5,000 accounts. Most security teams can see only a fraction of them. That gap is why we built Wallarm Infrastructure Discovery.
AI Agent Security Readiness: The Federal Standard You Should Get Ahead Of
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Wallarm authored by the team. Read the original post at: https://lab.wallarm.com/ai-agent-security-readiness/ Here’s the uncomfortable part first: in August 2026, researchers found AI agents connected to Hugging Face running loose inside enterprise networks. No owner, no audit trail, nobody who could tell you they existed until something broke. If that sentence made your stomach drop a little, good, because it should.
AI Control Platform vs. AI Firewall vs. AI Gateway: Clearing Up The Terminology
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Tim Erlin on LinkedIn. It has been republished here with the author’s permission. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-control-platform-vs-firewall-gateway-clearing-up-tim-erlin-ypodc It seems like every security vendor now sells “AI security.” The WAF companies, the API gateway companies, the cloud platforms, the proxy startups: all of them have an AI story, and most of them have attached one of three labels to it. AI gateway. AI firewall.
Introducing the Wallarm AI Control Platform: One closed loop for AI security and API security.
TL;DR - AI deployment has outpaced AI governance. Most enterprises running AI on AWS cannot answer four basic security questions about what's running, what it's doing,how to stop it, and how to prove it's under control. - The Wallarm AI Control Platform closes this gap: one platform for Discover, Observe,Enforce, and Govern — running natively in your AWS environment. - Infrastructure Discovery maps your AWS estate in minutes.
What Your Board Gets Wrong About AI Security
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Craig Riddell on LinkedIn. It has been republished here with the author’s permission. Boards are giving AI security more airtime than ever. What they’re not giving is the right framing. A year or two ago, AI was mostly a question of experimentation risk. Today, it’s tied directly to revenue, customer experience, operational efficiency, and competitive advantage. The urgency is real, and it’s translating into aggressive deployment timelines.
Extending Security to MCP Servers: Closing a Critical Gap
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a de facto standard for providing structured access to privileged systems for AI agents and external integrations. It acts as a USB-C port for AI, enabling faster innovation by allowing organizations to expose tools, resources, and workflows without the time-consuming work of building APIs. Adoption has surged in recent months, and categories like payments, project management, and developer platforms are already beginning to reap the benefits.
Introducing Wallarm Middle East Cloud: Built for Data Residency Compliance
As API and AI adoption grows across the Middle East, so do the expectations around how data is handled. For many organizations operating in this region, it’s not just about securing applications. It’s about doing it in a way that keeps data in-country and aligned with local requirements. Today, we’re introducing the Wallarm Middle East Cloud Point of Presence (POP), giving organizations a new way to secure APIs and AI systems while keeping their data exactly where it needs to be.
6 Lessons Security Leaders Must Learn About AI and APIs
Most organizations treating AI security as a model problem are defending the wrong layer. Security teams filter prompts, patch jailbreaks, and tune model behavior, which is all necessary work, while the actual attack surface sits largely unexamined underneath. That surface is the API layer: the endpoints AI systems use to retrieve data, call tools, and take action on behalf of users. This isn’t a theoretical gap.
Why API Discovery Is the First Step to Securing AI
TL;DR AI risk doesn’t live in the model. It lives in the APIs behind it. Every AI interaction triggers a chain of API calls across your environment. Many of those APIs aren’t documented or tracked. That’s your real exposure. Shadow API discovery gives you visibility into those hidden endpoints, so you can find them before attackers do. If you don’t know which APIs your AI relies on, you can’t secure the system.
Author : Tim Erlin
Security leaders have long prioritized endpoints, networks, and identities. That focus remains necessary, but it is no longer sufficient. Recent data points to a concrete...
APIs Are Now the Front Line of Cyber Risk, and AI Is Expanding the Attack Surface
Security leaders have long prioritized endpoints, networks, and identities. That focus remains necessary, but it is no longer sufficient. Recent data points to a concrete shift in attacker behavior. APIs now account for 43% of newly added vulnerabilities in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
CISO Spotlight: Dimitris Georgiou on Building Security that Serves People First
Dimitris Georgiou has been a self-professed computer geek since the early 80s. At university, he studied the convergence of educational technology with computer science as part of his psychology MA – finding, to his disbelief, that systems were perilously insecure. Since then, he’s always worked in and around cybersecurity.
The CISO’s Dilemma: How To Scale AI Securely
Your board wants AI. Your developers are building with it. Your budget committee is asking for an ROI timeline. But as CISO, you’re the one who has to answer when the inevitable question comes up: “How do we know this is secure?” If you’re like most security leaders, you’re caught between two impossible positions. Say yes to AI initiatives without proper security controls, and you’re responsible when something goes wrong.
Agent-to-Agent Attacks Are Coming: What API Security Teaches Us About Securing AI Systems
AI systems are no longer just isolated models responding to human prompts. In modern production environments, they are increasingly chained together – delegating tasks, calling tools, and coordinating decisions with limited or no human oversight. Almost all that communication happens through APIs. This shift offers enormous productivity benefits. But it has also complicated security. Because as soon as systems can talk to each other, they can be attacked through each other.
Everyone Knows About Broken Authorization - So Why Does It Still Work for Attackers?
Broken authorization is one of the most widely known API vulnerabilities. It features in the OWASP Top 10, AppSec conversations, and secure coding guidelines. Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) and Broken Function Level Authorization (BFLA) account for hundreds of API vulnerabilities every quarter.
From Shadow APIs to Shadow AI: How the API Threat Model Is Expanding Faster Than Most Defenses
The shadow technology problem is getting worse. Over the past few years, organizations have scaled microservices, cloud-native apps, and partner integrations faster than corporate governance models could keep up, resulting in undocumented or shadow APIs. We’re now seeing this pattern all over again with AI systems. And, even worse, AI introduces non-deterministic behavior, autonomous actions, and machine-to-machine decision-making.
Inside Modern API Attacks: What We Learn from the 2026 API ThreatStats Report
API security has been a growing concern for years. However, while it was always seen as important, it often came second to application security or hardening infrastructure. In 2025, the picture changed. Wallarm’s 2026 API ThreatStats Report revealed that APIs are now the primary attack surface for digital business, and not because bad actors discovered new zero-days, but because of compounding failures in identity, exposure, and abuse.
CISO Spotlight: Craig Riddell on Curiosity, Translation, and Why API Security is the New Business Imperative
It’s an unusually cold winter morning in Houston, and Craig Riddell is settling into his new role as Wallarm’s Global Field CISO. It’s a position that suits him down to the ground, blending technical depth, empathy, business acumen, and, what Craig believes, the most underrated skill in cybersecurity: curiosity. Like so many of us, Craig got into cybersecurity by accident. He first learned Unix under the guidance of a mentor while transitioning out of the military.
7 Reasons to Get Certified in API Security
API security is becoming more important by the day and skilled practitioners are in high demand. Now’s the time to level up your API security skillset. Wallarm University, our free training course, provides security analysts, engineers, and practitioners with hands-on skills you can’t get from documentation, videos, or traditional courses. Run real attacks, investigate real signals, and learn exactly how to defend API environments when it counts. Here are the 7 reasons you should register.
From Agent2Agent Prompt Injection to Runtime Self-Defense: How Wallarm Redefines Agentic AI Security
Is an AI-to-AI attack scenario a science fiction possibility only for blockbusters like the Terminator series of movies?
CISO Spotlight: Lefteris Tzelepis on Leadership, Strategy, and the Modern Security Mandate
Lefteris Tzelepis, CISO at Steelmet /Viohalco Companies, was shaped by cybersecurity. From his early exposure to real-world attacks at the Greek Ministry of Defense to building and leading security programs inside complex enterprises, his career mirrors the evolution of the CISO role itself. Now a group CISO overseeing security across multiple organizations, Lefteris brings a practitioner’s mindset to leadership and incident response.
When your AI Assistant Becomes the Attacker’s Command-and-Control
Earlier this month, Microsoft uncovered SesameOp, a new backdoor malware that abuses the OpenAI Assistants API as a covert command-and-control (C2) channel. The discovery has drawn significant attention within the cybersecurity community. Security teams can no longer focus solely on endpoint malware. Attackers are weaponizing public and legitimate AI assistant APIs and defenders must adjust. SesameOp is a custom backdoor malware.
APIs Are the Retail Engine: How to Secure Them This Black Friday
Can you ever imagine the impact on your business if it went offline on Black Friday or Cyber Monday due to a cyberattack? Black Friday is the biggest day in the retail calendar. It’s also the riskiest. As you gear up for huge surges in online traffic, ask yourself: have you protected the APIs on which the business runs? When you think about Black Friday, what images come to mind? Lines of tents and chairs outside malls? Discount-crazed shoppers barging their way past shell-shocked retail workers?
OWASP Top 10 Business Logic Abuse: What You Need to Know
Over the past few years, API security has gone from a relatively niche concern to a headline issue. A slew of high-profile breaches and compliance mandates like PCI DSS 4.0 have woken security teams up to the reality that APIs are the front door to their data, infrastructure, and revenue streams. OWASP recently published its first-ever Business Logic Abuse Top 10 List; a clear indication that the industry is taking API security and all its nuances seriously.
When APIs Become Attack Paths: What the Q3 2025 ThreatStats Report Tells Us
Wallarm’s latest Q3 2025 API ThreatStats report [link placeholder] reveals that API vulnerabilities, exploits, and breaches are not just increasing; they’re evolving. Malicious actors are shifting from code-level weaknesses to business logic flaws, from web apps to partner integrations, and from REST to AI-powered APIs. Here’s what stood out this quarter, and what security leaders should do about it. In Q3 2025, our researchers identified 1,602 API-related vulnerabilities, a 20% increase from Q2.
API Attack Awareness: Business Logic Abuse - Exploiting the Rules of the Game
As Cybersecurity Awareness Month continues, we wanted to dive even deeper into the attack methods affecting APIs. We’ve already reviewed Broken Object Level Authentication (BOLA), injection attacks, and authentication flaws; this week, we’re exploring business logic abuse (BLA). Unlike technical flaws, business logic flaws exploit how an API is designed to behave.
Key API Security Takeaways from the Postman 2025 State of API Report
API security has never been more important because modern APIs are operational necessities. Unfortunately, many organizations are failing to adapt their security models to a rapidly changing API threat landscape. Like it or not, we live in an AI-first world, and API security must reflect that reality. The Postman 2025 State of API Report is confirmation of that fact. AI already plays a significant role in modern business functions.
AWS Outage: Lessons Learned
What can we learn from the recent AWS outage, and how can we apply those lessons to our own infrastructure? On October 20, 2025, AWS experienced a major disruption that rippled across the internet (and social media), affecting widely used services such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Atlassian.
API Attack Awareness: When Authentication Fails - Exposing APIs to Risk
Authentication issues seem like low-level attacks. But authentication today – especially API authentication – can be more difficult than people expect. Companies rely on APIs to carry sensitive information every day. If access to those APIs is not properly secured, all the sophisticated security solutions companies use to protect their data elsewhere are completely undermined.
API Attack Awareness: Injection Attacks in APIs - Old Threat, New Surface
Injection attacks are among the oldest tricks in the attacker playbook. And yet they persist. The problem is that the core weakness, trusting user inputs too much, keeps resurfacing in new forms. As organizations have shifted to API-driven architectures and integrated AI systems that consume unstructured input, the attack surface has expanded dramatically.
API Attack Awareness: Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) - Why It Tops the OWASP API Top 10
For this Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we thought it important to draw attention to some of the most common and dangerous API vulnerabilities. This week, we’re starting with Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA). BOLA vulnerabilities top the OWASP API Top Ten. And for good reason: they’re startlingly prevalent, remarkably easy to exploit, and can have devastating consequences. So, let’s explore what they are, why they matter, and how you can mitigate them.
CISO Spotlight: AJ Debole on the Business-Tech Divide, Breach Readiness, and AI Risks
AJ Debole is Field CISO at Oracle, but her journey began far from the corporate boardroom. After starting out in law and government, she moved into healthcare and cyber defense, where she led teams through ransomware crises. In this spotlight, she explores the next wave of challenges – aligning security with business incentives, taming AI sprawl, and securing the APIs that connect it all.
Scaling API Security Without the Complexity: Lessons from Early Adopters
APIs are a blessing and a curse. They’re the backbone of the modern internet. They also expose complex behaviors that are often poorly documented, stitched together across legacy and cloud systems, and updated faster than security teams can review.
Inside Wallarm Security Edge: Instant Protection at the API Edge
APIs are now the beating heart of digital infrastructure. But as they have risen in importance, they’ve also become prime targets for attackers. Complex, often poorly understood API behaviors present rich opportunities for exploitation, and too often, security teams are left scrambling to protect critical infrastructure with outdated tools or cumbersome deployments. Wallarm’s Security Edge is the answer to this problem.
The API Security Dilemma: Why Traditional Approaches Are Failing in the AI Era
Throughout the past few years, APIs have become the backbone of digital infrastructure. They enable software-to-software communication, improve integration and interoperability, support modular architecture, and more. But as API use has exploded, so has API traffic volume and complexity, making them increasingly difficult to secure. And the rise of AI agents and automation have complicated matters further. The result? APIs have become a favourite attack vector for cybercriminals.
The API Security Reality Check: Key Takeaways from Q2 2025 API ThreatStats Report
API security has never been more crucial. Vulnerabilities are growing in volume and severity. AI integrations are a burgeoning attack vector. Increasing GraphQL adoption presents hidden dangers. To protect your organization, you must secure your APIs. Keep reading for our key takeaways from the Wallarm Q2 2025 API ThreatStats report – and find out what you need to do to protect yourself. 70% of organizations now use GraphQL. And yet, there were no GraphQL-specific breaches reported in Q2 2025.
Exploiting API4 - 8 Real-World Unrestricted Resource Consumption Attack Scenarios (and How to Stop Them)
Unrestricted Resource Consumption (API4:2023) is the only threat category in the OWASP API Security Top 10 explicitly dedicated to Denial of Service (DoS) and resource abuse.
IBM 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report: Lessons for API and AI Security
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report offers one of the clearest and most comprehensive views yet of how AI adoption is shaping the security landscape. While breach numbers are relatively low – only 13% of organizations reported breaches involving AI models or applications – the report reveals a troubling pattern: APIs and integrations are often the real entry point, and they’re frequently under-secured. At Wallarm, we’ve been banging this drum for a while.
Debunking API Security Myths
I recently sat down with Tejpal Garwhal, Application Security and DevSecOps Leader, for a conversation debunking some of the most common API security myths. From zombie endpoints to the limits of WAFS and gateways, we covered what’s really happening on the ground; and what security teams need to do differently. Here’s a quick rundown of the key takeaways, but for the full picture, watch the full webinar. This was the first and most persistent myth we tackled.
Beyond Traditional Threats: The Rise of AI-Driven API Vulnerabilities
AI has had dramatic impacts on almost every facet of every industry. API security is no exception. Up until recently, defending APIs meant guarding against well-understood threats. But as AI proliferates, automated adversaries, AI-crafted exploits, and business logic abuse have complicated matters. It’s no longer enough to merely patch known flaws; security teams must now contend with intelligent, adaptive attacks that evolve as fast as the technology they target.
Addressing API Security with NIST SP 800-228
According to the Wallarm Q1 2025 ThreatStats report, 70% of all application attacks target APIs. The industry can no longer treat API security as a sidenote; it’s time to treat it as the main event.
User Privacy vs National Security
Last week, Dr. Zero Trust, AKA Dr. Chase Cunningham, posted in Linkedin that he was fed up with people who say they don’t understand Zero Trust. To a certain extent, I feel his frustration. Journalists understand the concept. We have a decades-old saying, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” It doesn’t get more zero trust than that.
CISO Spotlight: Mike Wilkes on Building Resilience in an Evolving Threat Landscape
Mike Wilkes has had a career many cybersecurity professionals could only dream of. An adjunct professor, former CISO of Marvel and MLS, member of the World Economic Forum, drummer, and board member at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, his interests and achievements are as eclectic as they are impressive.
Attackers Abuse TikTok and Instagram APIs
It must be the season for API security incidents. Hot on the heels of a developer leaking an API key for private Tesla and SpaceX LLMs, researchers have now discovered a set of tools for validating account information via API abuse, leveraging undocumented TikTok and Instagram APIs. The tools, and assumed exploitation, involve malicious Python packages – checker-SaGaF, stein lurks, and inner core – uploaded to PyPI.
Developer Leaks API Key for Private Tesla, SpaceX LLMs
In AI, as with so many advancing technologies, security often lags innovation. The xAI incident, during which a sensitive API key remained exposed for nearly two months, is a stark reminder of this disconnect. Such oversights not only jeopardize proprietary technologies but also highlight systemic vulnerabilities in API management. As more organizations integrate AI into their operations, ensuring robust API security has never been more critical.
API Threat Trends: How Attackers Are Exploiting Business Logic
As businesses rely more on APIs, attackers are quick to turn that trust into opportunity. Among the most dangerous and difficult-to-detect threats are business logic exploits, which let cybercriminals manipulate legitimate functionality to gain unauthorized access, exfiltrate data, or disrupt operations. These attacks often slip past traditional defenses unnoticed, making them a growing concern for security teams.
The API Imperative: Securing Agentic AI and Beyond
We recently released The Rise of Agentic AI, our API ThreatStats report for Q1 2025, finding that evolving API threats are fueled by the rise of agentic AI systems, growing complexity in cloud-native infrastructure, and a surge in software supply chain risks, and uncovered patterns and actionable insights to help organizations prioritize risks and harden their defenses. Keep reading to find out more. Agentic AI is the technology of the moment.
Meeting NIST API Security Guidelines with Wallarm
On March 25, 2025, NIST released the initial public draft of NIST SP 800-228, “Guidelines for API Protection for Cloud-Native Systems.” The document provides a comprehensive framework for securing APIs in cloud-enabled environments. However, for organizations looking to align with these objectives, the tooling requirements may seem initially overwhelming. Fortunately, Wallarm helps streamline the process by integrating many of these recommendations into a single, cloud-native solution.
The API Security Challenge in AI: Preventing Resource Exhaustion and Unauthorized Access
Agentic AI is transforming business. Organizations are increasingly integrating AI agents into core business systems and processes, using them as intermediaries between users and these internal systems. As a result, these organizations are improving efficiency, automating routine tasks, and driving innovation. But these benefits come at a cost. AI agents rely on APIs to access data and functionality from underlying systems. Without APIs, AI agents are useless.
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