Before Implementing an API, Consider These Risks

As businesses continue to place an increased reliance on cloud technologies, many services are implementing application programming interfaces (APIs) into their systems as a way to extend the functionality of their systems.~ One of the great things about software is that it allows companies to expand the power of their code by allowing third-parties to leverage their platforms. Whether you run a collaboration platform, productivity suite or a database of product reviews, creating an API for your platform allows you to put the data to a better purpose.

By leveraging an API, customers can access crucial assets in a self-service way, helping to reduce internal development costs and allow even small development firms to produce quality systems with ease. Before opening your data to third-party developers, you should consider how the API will use information and who has access to it. In many cases your company can be held liable for improper use of information as long as the information involved in such incidents came from your applications.

Fortunately you can minimize these risks by addressing a few standard considerations. Identify your consumers, the developer base, and the purpose of the API. From there, you can set access restrictions around the information to ensure information is kept on a need to know basis. You also should consider the locations of the third-party developer companies. For example European users have significantly more stringent privacy restrictions than US based users. If your company handles data subject to compliance – medical, legal, or financial – then the risks involved with opening your platform to outsiders is going to be much higher than any benefit you can derive.

If you choose to implement an API, you’ll need to consider proper storage, disposal, usage time limitation, usage purpose limitation, and more for your system.~ If you’re looking for guidance on these matters, you might want to look towards your existing information handling policies and then build your best practices around those.

For a better idea of how API’s are changing the software landscape, Site 24x7 has an article on Zapier which is a tool which allows users to automate tasks with ease. Although it’s a fairly high level interface to API technologies, it still is a notable example of why all information technology professionals should stay atop of trends in this space.