Gartner defines API protection products as a category of specialized stand-alone security products focusing on protecting APIs from exploits, abuse and access violations, and assisting in remediating API exposures. These products offer features such as API discovery, API security testing, API posture management and runtime protection utilizing behavioral analysis. They should provide coverage for the internal- and external-facing APIs, and third-party APIs that organizations may consume. API protection products are delivered as cloud-based and on-premises solutions. Deployment can be offered in-line by intercepting ingress/egress API calls or out-of-band by deploying agents on application workloads and/or scanning code repositories.
Gartner defines the application security testing (AST) market as consisting of providers of products that enable organizations to assess applications for the presence and management of risk. These products identify risk by evaluating source code, performing runtime tests and inspecting supply chain components. AST products can be integrated throughout development workflows for continuous assessment or be used to perform ad hoc evaluations. They enable organizations to manage application risks by providing an integrated set of capabilities for risk identification, prioritization and triage, policy evaluation and enforcement, and remediation assistance. Market offerings are available in on-premises, SaaS and hybrid delivery models. Organizations leverage AST products to assess applications for the presence of security vulnerabilities and other risks (e.g., legal and operational) throughout their life cycle. These assessments are used to measure and manage the risks within individual applications, application components or groups of applications in the context of their business criticality and other key attributes (e.g., environment, sensitive data handling, etc.). AST products further enable organizations to evaluate software for compliance with internal policies as well as regulatory requirements established by governments or authoritative industry groups.
Gartner defines software supply chain security (SSCS) tools as those that enable the building of secure software by protecting against compromises during development and delivery. These protections extend to source code, developer identities, development tools, delivery pipelines, and postdeployment patches. SSCS tools reduce third-party risks through policy-based curation of dependencies, software composition analysis (SCA) and software bill of materials (SBOM) inspection. They ensure artifact provenance and traceability with signing and verification as they pass through development and delivery pipelines. SSCS tools support SaaS and hybrid deployment models, and complement DevOps platforms in improving the organization’s DevSecOps maturity.