API gateway is a service that sits in front of an organization’s APIs to provide a unified interface to developers, acting as a “gateway” to the APIs. API Gateway solutions provide features like security, rate limiting, and monitoring, as well as management and governance capabilities for the APIs. API Gateway serves as a single point of entry for all systems, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. They also provide a range of additional features, including security, performance monitoring, and analytics. Here are three key benefits of using an API gateway.
1. Increased Security and Authentication
Increased security is just one of the benefits of an API gateway. They act as a buffer between your API and the outside world, preventing unauthorized access and protecting your data. API gateways also help you manage your API traffic, ensuring that only authorized users can access your API. The gateway serves as the forefront of your web app, which provides a layer of security between your app and the internet. API Gateways can do a variety of things to increase security for your web app, including:
- Filtering out malicious traffic
- Restricting access to certain parts of your app based on user permissions
- Automatically logging all user activity
By using an API gateway, you can help to ensure that your web app remains safe and secure from malicious attacks. API gateways are a critical piece of an organization’s security posture, but they are not a silver bullet. An API gateway can help protect against certain types of threats, but it should not be used as a complete substitute for a comprehensive security strategy.
2. Reduced Complexity and Improved Performance
Apart from securing against cyber threats, API gateways provide an intermediary between the consumers of an API and the API providers. This can improve performance as requests no longer need to go through the entire API stack, but can be routed directly to the gateway. API gateways also provide a centralized point of control for all API calls. This can reduce the workload on your development team by handling API requests and responses. Gateway services can even help ensure that all calls to your APIs are properly authenticated and authorized. API gateways can help you monitor and analyze API activity, allowing you to optimize your API usage and performance. They optimize API performance and provide a simplified way to manage APIs, making it easier for developers to interact with them. They also shield developers from the underlying complexity of the APIs, allowing them to focus on their core business.
3. Better Scalability
API gateways enable businesses to easily scale their APIs as their needs grow. This is due to the gateways’ ability to manage and route traffic to multiple APIs. API gateways can help to increase the scalability of an API by managing and throttling requests. This can help to ensure that the API remains responsive even under high loads. Even API Gateways can help to enhance scalability by offloading processing tasks from backend systems. They help manage traffic and optimize resource utilization. This can ensure that your systems can handle increased traffic loads as your business grows. Thanks to the ability to. offload API calls and processing from your backend servers, this will improve response times.
On top of these benefits, API gateways can even be used to collect data analytics. You can use the data to improve your APIs and make them more user-friendly. Additionally, the data collected by the API gateway can be used to improve your overall business process. There is a multitude of benefits that can be gained from utilizing an API gateway. These are just a few examples of how you can gain full control of the API execution environment.