Many organizations have hundreds or thousands of API endpoints across their services, each of which handles authentication differently. For example, one service might rely on standard headers like Authorization: Bearer, while another uses an API key, and a third uses a custom JSON Web Token header with mechanisms or naming conventions specific to the team that built it. As these systems evolve, it becomes difficult for security teams to understand which API endpoints actually require authentication, and which are exposed. This in turn makes it harder to identify and address the greatest risks.
Datadog App & API Protection includes improved API authentication detection to help you detect issues with your APIs’ security posture more confidently, and with less manual effort. By focusing on provable signals, surfacing detection evidence, and enabling customization for your environment, this update helps security teams reduce ambiguity, cut down false positives, and act on real risks.
In this post, we’ll explore how these improvements help you:
Rely on authentication detection grounded in verifiable evidenceUnderstand authentication status directly within your API inventoryCustomize detection logic with endpoint tagging rulesAct on authentication findings with clear next steps
