Monitoring API connections is an important function of API management. It can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Some organizations use an on-premises monitoring solution to monitor the connection between the API and its backend system, while others use a cloud-based service that monitors all connections over the internet.
There are various reasons why one may want to monitor their API connections, including security reasons and performance reasons. Monitoring is also necessary when you are using APIs in production and have many teams using them simultaneously.
Getting Started with Monitoring APIs
Monitoring APIs allow developers to create applications that can monitor the status of an API. It is not necessary to have a list of API solutions to use monitoring APIs.
Monitoring APIs provide a way for developers to use their own custom APIs, which they have written themselves, as well as third-party APIs.
What are the Best Tools for Monitoring APIs?
The tools listed below are some of the most popular and best-known ones.
Shodan
Shodan is an API that can be used to find specific types of devices connected to the Internet.
This API also has a search engine that allows users to search for specific devices by their name or MAC address.
Fiddler2 is an HTTP debugger tool with many functionalities, such as capturing requests and responses from the browser, modifying requests, replaying them in real time, analyzing response codes, and more.
Splunk
Splunk is an operating system for machine data. It is an open-source platform that collects, indexes, and searches all machine data from various sources.
Splunk can monitor machine-generated logs, deep packet inspection, and real-time data streams to provide a complete view of all applications and IT infrastructure in one place.
Wireshark
Wireshark is a powerful, open-source network protocol analyzer tool with a rich feature set that makes it useful for network administrators, security experts, developers, and students alike.
Wireshark allows you to capture, view, and analyze network traffic in real time.
Tower
The tower is an API management platform for API providers who want to make their APIs available via API management solutions. The tower enables developers to seamlessly manage APIs from the Tower portal.
Why You Should Start Monetizing & Protecting Your APIs Now?
To keep up with the fast pace of technology, API providers need to constantly innovate and provide new features. Even the best API providers are not immune to threats such as cyberattacks, data breaches, or intellectual property violations.
Many of them continue to face constant threats from third parties that can potentially exploit their APIs in malicious ways.
Having an API without any protection is like having an unprotected home; it is vulnerable to burglars who might steal your things or use your home for illegal activities.
To minimize the risks associated with having an unprotected API, developers and providers need to follow best practices in API security.
Even small precautions, such as implementing a single sign-on (SSO) on an API and regularly monitoring the connection between APIs, can help protect one’s data, business logic, and revenue-generating opportunities.
