Cloudflare API Shield
Global, integrated API protection and monitoring
Powered by 330 locations on our global network, API Shield automatically discovers, validates, and protects your API endpoints.
Benefits of API Shield
Automatically discover API endpoints
Continuously discover your public API endpoints and their schemas with machine learning models and heuristics.
Block OWASP Top 10 API security risks
Stop common API attacks, including zero-day exploits, authentication abuse, data loss, DDoS, and other business logic attacks.
Reduce costs by only serving to clean API traffic
Validate incoming requests against schemas, authentication, and legitimate API business logic — and reduce your API hosting costs.
How it works
Protect and maintain high-performing APIs with integrated security and monitoring
Built on our global, Internet-native network, API Shield automatically discovers, secures, and monitors API endpoints across your entire landscape — without slowing business innovation.
It consolidates application and API inventory, policy management, analytics, and reporting on a single platform, with the same connectivity and security benefits offered by Cloudflare’s web application services.
Learn how your company’s API security compares to industry peers
ANALYST RECOGNITION
2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Cloud Web Application and API Protection
Cloudflare was recognized as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner Market Guide for WAAP.
Top API Shield use cases
Cloudflare API Shield helps you catalog and manage API endpoints, while blocking attacks, vulnerability exploits, and data leakage
Discover shadow APIs
Document every public API in your landscape, even those that are unmanaged or unsecured.
Prevent data exfiltration
Stop data leaks by continuously scanning response payloads for sensitive data.
Create a positive security model
Protect APIs by only accepting traffic that conforms to your OpenAPI schemas — while blocking malformed requests and HTTP anomalies.
API Shield resources
API Shield FAQs
What is Cloudflare API Shield?
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How does API Shield use a positive security model?
