Forrester Blogs » Category: mobile security

Can You Join The API Economy While Maintaining Top-Notch Security?

Posted by Eve Maler on the Security & Risk Professionals Blog on October 18, 2011

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Eve Maler

If anything exemplifies the extended enterprise, it's the notion of the "API economy": Unlocking value in your organization's unique data and services by publishing open APIs (application programming interfaces) for access by third parties. As Laura Koetzle notes, business leaders today are prioritizing growth above all -- and fostering a third-party developer ecosystem is becoming a great way to boost revenue. Best Buy, eBay, and USA Today are examples of companies with APIs and external developer communities.

But, but, but...just how secure is an open API? Especially if you, the security professional, can't fully control these external developers' actions? This is where it gets exciting, because security and identity-based access control are enablers of these new business opportunities. After all, an API of this sort is essentially a digital product whose use must be metered.

Many organizations in this position are turning to the OAuth technology to solve a host of security challenges that arise from opening up APIs. I'm excited to be bringing the latest in OAuth business cases, adoption news, and recommendations to my Forrester Security Forum track session on "Securing And Identity-Enabling Monster Mashups." Hope to see you at the Forum November 9-10 in Miami!

(Got a great API security story, or maybe some questions? Don't wait till November; feel free to share in a comment here, or ping me on Twitter using the #FSF11 hashtag.)

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Protecting The Extended Enterprise

Posted by Laura Koetzle on the Security & Risk Professionals Blog on October 17, 2011

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Laura Koetzle

“To succeed, Security & Risk leaders need to be part of the business strategy.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone give some variation on that piece of advice, I’d be rich. As you all know, that’s an easy thing to say but a difficult thing to do. And that’s particularly true now, because our business leaders today are prioritizing growth – they’re entering new markets and releasing new products and services to grow revenue. Your business will unleash the creativity of its entire extended enterprise ecosystem – employees, partners, suppliers, and current customers – to find new ways to win and serve new customers. And your extended enterprise will connect via mobile and social applications and use cloud services. 

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In Cloud-Friendly Web Services Security, "There Is No Enterprise." Wait. What?

Posted by Eve Maler on the Security & Risk Professionals Blog on July 15, 2011

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Eve Maler

“There is no enterprise — the work we do is a collection of people that dynamically changes through a mix of organization control.” That’s what I heard from one venerable old construction company while working on my new research report, Protecting Enterprise APIs With A Light Touch. I wanted to investigate how enterprises are using and securing lightweight RESTful web services, and in particular to figure out the problems for which OAuth is well suited. (You might recall my request for feedback in a prior post.)

 What I found was that forward-thinking enterprises of many types – not just hip-happenin’ Web 2.0 companies – are pushing service security and access management to the limit in environments that can truly be called “Zero Trust,” to use John Kindervag’s excellent formulation. This particular firm dynamically manipulates authorizations to control access to a variety of innovative lightweight APIs on which the whole company is being run, not actually distinguishing between “internal” and “external” users. They’ve kind of turned themselves inside-out.

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Security Forum 2010: Day 2 Keynotes-At-A-Glance

Posted by Stephanie Balaouras on the Security & Risk Professionals Blog on September 21, 2010

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Stephanie Balaouras

Last week, I wrote a blog post summarizing the Day 1 opening keynotes at Forrester’s Security Forum.  This week, I’d like to recap the Day 2 opening keynotes. The second or last day at any event is always a challenge; attendees are always tempted to leave early or to stay in their hotel rooms to get some work done or if the event is in Vegas, squeeze in some craps (my favorite) or drop a few coins in a nearby slot. Luckily, we held the event in Boston and the lobsters have nowhere to run, so most attendees were happy to stick around until the end of the day. Not only did we have great attendance on Day 2, but there was a palpable buzz in the air. The audience asked tough questions and no one was spared — Forrester analysts, industry guest speakers, and vendors. While the main topic of Day 1 seemed to focus on risk and overall strategy, governance, and oversight, Day 2 focused on coming up with the specifics — the specific plans, the specific policies. As Andrew Jaquith stated in his keynote, to provide better data security, “you don’t need more widgets, what you need is a plan.”

Below are some of the highlights from the Day 2 keynotes: 

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