You need an API security solution. That much is a given (although some may argue it isn’t!). While essential for business growth and innovation, APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, expose the organizations that use them to cyber threats. Attackers are both aware of and actively exploiting this fact: Wallarm recently revealed that attacks on APIs impacted 98.35 million users in Q2 2024. 

The more difficult decision, however, is choosing the right deployment option for your API security solution. There are a vast number of deployment options available, and choosing the right one is crucial to getting the most out of your API security solution. So, without further ado, let’s explore the key factors you should consider when deciding on a deployment option for your API security solution.

Understanding the Scope of API Protection 

The first and most important step in deciding on a deployment option is understanding what you need to protect. As the old saying goes, “You can’t protect what you don’t know.” Ask yourself what sites need protection and where do they reside? Do they need inline protection or out-of-band only? For example, you may need to protect APIs hosted in the cloud, on-premises, or both. Knowing this information will help you determine the right deployment strategy for your infrastructure.

Decide the Deployment Model

Once you have a better understanding of your API environment, you can then decide individually, per environment, what deployment solution to go with. The scope dictates your approach.

Wallarm offers a versatile and flexible approach to deployment, accommodating a wide range of infrastructure setups without impacting licensing costs. The platform's licensing model is based solely on the number of requests processed, regardless of the deployment method chosen. 

This allows organizations to seamlessly integrate Wallarm into their existing environments, whether through popular options like NGINX reverse proxies, Wallarm-hosted edge nodes (Security Edge), or various connectors such as Cloudflare, Mulesoft, and Kong. For containerized environments, Wallarm supports Kubernetes ingress controllers and Docker container services, ensuring comprehensive protection across diverse architectures. 

This request-based licensing model, combined with Wallarm's extensive deployment options, provides businesses with the flexibility to implement robust API security measures tailored to their specific needs and infrastructure preferences.

Scalability, Latency, and Redundancy 

Choosing the right deployment option also depends on factors such as scalability, latency, and redundancy. These considerations are especially important for organizations with high traffic volumes or mission-critical applications. 

You need to ensure your API security solution can scale with your traffic so that it can protect all your APIs as your business grows. What’s more, you must ensure that your deployment option can scale seamlessly, with no downtime, especially if you operate in a sector like healthcare or financial services where outages result in business disruptions and potential bottom-line losses. 

Your deployment strategy needs also to consider the performance of your API security solution. Wallarm's architecture is designed to minimize latency impact while providing robust API security. The platform offers multiple deployment options that can be tailored to your specific infrastructure needs, ensuring optimal performance. 

Wallarm's filtering nodes are engineered for high performance and near-zero latency. These nodes can be deployed directly into existing load balancers (e.g., NGINX, Envoy) or API gateways (e.g., Kong), eliminating the need for additional network hops and maintaining ultra-low latency. For Kubernetes environments, Wallarm can be integrated as an Ingress Controller or as a sidecar proxy, allowing for flexible deployment options that minimize impact on network performance.

While Wallarm excels in keeping additional latency extremely low with its inspections, it's always good to evaluate your deployment strategy to ensure additional network hops don't introduce unacceptable amounts of latency.

It’s equally important to ensure your API security solution has redundancy and remains functional if something goes wrong. A well-architected deployment should include backup nodes and failover capabilities, allowing your business to maintain API protection even if one part of the system goes down.

Integration with Existing Systems 

You likely operate in a complex environment that includes multiple tools, platforms, and services. As such, you must ensure that your deployment option integrates with this infrastructure. You must also ensure that your API security solution deployment integrates with all your systems, including log management, ticketing solutions, paging and chat solutions, and SIEMs. 

Wallarm offers numerous out-of-the-box integrations with existing systems the customer uses, such as:

• Ticketing systems (JIRA, ServiceNow, etc.)
• SIEM/SOAR solutions (SumoLogic, Splunk, MS Sentinel)
• Log Management (Datadog)
• S3, Logstash, and Fluentd 

In addition, Wallarm offers support for outbound Webhooks for anything we don't have a dedicated integration for. This means you can streamline the flow of security alerts and notifications and enable timely mitigation of any issues.

Customization and Support  

Customization is another important factor you must consider when choosing your deployment option. Your API security solution should include flexible rule configurations that allow you to tailor security policies to your specific needs. For example, Wallarm provides customizable virtual patches that can block specific threats or API tokens, offering our clients the flexibility to apply unique rules depending on their use case. Wallarm’s customizable rules engine can fine-tune the security solution to the needs and behaviors of your applications.

After-sale support is also an important factor to consider. Opt for vendors that provide personalized support with dedicated agents to help you troubleshoot or tailor your API security solution. Timely communication with the solution engineers and experts, such as the one offered by Wallarm, can be a savior in difficult times.

Out-of-the-Box Compliance 

Wallarm provides comprehensive tools to help organizations align their API security practices with industry-recognized frameworks and standards. One key feature is Wallarm's dashboard that maps to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. This framework, while not a regulatory requirement itself, serves as a valuable guide for organizations to assess and improve their cybersecurity and compliance practices. The dashboard provides an intuitive visualization of your security status across the framework's core functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.

Additionally, Wallarm offers a dedicated dashboard for the OWASP API Top 10, which highlights the most critical security risks to APIs. This tool allows you to quickly identify and prioritize actions against common API vulnerabilities, aligning your security efforts with industry-recognized threats.

These dashboards serve as powerful instruments for security review and action planning, helping you to:

1. Identify gaps in your API security strategy
2. Prioritize security improvements based on recognized frameworks
3. Track progress in enhancing your overall security posture
4. Facilitate communication about security status with stakeholders

Engage All Stakeholders 

The technical deployment itself isn’t typically very difficult. However, getting everyone—from the development team to the security and infrastructure teams and all other stakeholders—on the same page can be difficult. You need to build a comprehensive plan to ensure all company departments are aligned with security requirements to avoid any possible delays and complications during deployment. 

How Wallarm Can Help

Once you have considered all the above, you should be ready to choose your deployment option. You can find a full list of Wallarm’s deployment options here. Book a demo of Wallarm’s industry-leading API security solution today to find out how your business can achieve full coverage for API-specific threats, account takeover, malicious bots, L7 DDoS, and more — in one platform.