Why Brazilian E-commerce Needs to Take API Security Seriously

APIs have consolidated as the backbone of the digital economy, but have also become one of the main vectors of cyber attack. In Brazil, each company suffered, on average, 2.6 thousand invasion attempts per week in the first quarter of 2025, according to a report by Check Point Research (July/25), an increase of 21% compared to the same period of the previous year, a scenario that puts the integration layer at the center of security discussions.

Without governance, well-defined contracts and proper testing, seemingly small errors can knock out e-commerce checkouts, crash Pix operations, and compromise critical integrations with partners. The case of Claro, for example, which had exposed credentials, S3 buckets with logs and configurations, as well as access to databases and AWS infrastructure put up for sale by hackers, illustrates how failures in integrations can compromise both confidentiality and availability of cloud services. 

API protection, however, is not solved by acquiring isolated tools. The central point is to structure secure development processes from the beginning design-first, with the use of specifications such as OpenAPI, it allows to validate contracts and create a solid basis for security reviews involving authentication, permissions and processing of sensitive data. Without this foundation, any further reinforcement tends to be palliative.

Automated tests, in addition to being the next line of defense, perform API security tests with tools such as OWASP ZAP and Burp Suite, continuously generating failure scenarios such as injections, authentication bypasses, request limit overflows and unexpected error responses. Likewise, load and stress tests ensure that critical integrations remain stable under heavy traffic, blocking the possibility of malicious bots, responsible for much of the internet traffic, compromising systems by saturation.

The cycle is completed in production, where observability becomes an essential element.Monitor metrics such as latency, error rate per endpoint and call correlation between systems allows you to detect anomalies early. This visibility shortens response time, preventing technical failures from turning into incidents of unavailability or exploitable loopholes by attackers.

For companies operating in e-commerce, financial services or critical sectors, neglect of the integration layer can generate significant costs in revenue loss, regulatory sanctions and reputational damage.Startups, in particular, face the additional challenge of balancing speed of delivery with the need for robust controls, since their competitiveness depends on both innovation and reliability.

API governance also gains relevance in the face of international standards, such as ISO/IEC 42001:2023 (or ISO 42001), which establishes requirements for artificial intelligence management systems. Although it does not deal directly with APIs, it becomes relevant when APIs expose or consume AI models, especially in regulatory contexts. In this scenario, the practices recommended by OWASP API Security for applications based on language models also gain strength. These benchmarks offer objective paths for companies seeking to reconcile productivity with regulatory compliance and security.

In a scenario where integrations have become vital for digital business, secure APIs are continuously tested and monitored APIs. Combining structured design, automated security and performance testing, and real-time observability, not only reduces the attack surface, but creates more resilient teams. The difference between operating preventively or reactively can define survival in an environment increasingly exposed to threats.

*Matthew Santos is CTO and partner of Vericode. With more than 20 years of experience in systems in the financial, electrical and telecom areas, he has expertise in architecture, analysis and optimization of performance, capacity and availability of systems. Responsible for the company's technology, Mateus leads the innovation and development of advanced technical solutions.