It is a mistake to think we can secure APIs using the same methods and technology that we used to secure the conventional, browser-centric web.
Andi Mann from CA Technologies recently pointed out that, at every turn, customers are interacting more and more with businesses through applications. “Think of real estate businesses like Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com,” he wrote in Wired’s Innovation Insights. “Or think about restaurants. It used to be that we’d call a restaurant to make a reservation, or even drop in and make a reservation. Now it’s all on-line, through OpenTable, or Foursquare.” This is the emergence of the Application Economy, where the application becomes the primary point of contact between the business and the customer.
Much of this is being made possible through the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to link front-end applications to back-end information systems. This approach is exploding in popularity because it builds on well-understood techniques from the web and leverages some existing infrastructure.