How to Prevent API Attacks

The Rising Threat of API Attacks

APIs have become the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, enabling seamless communication between systems, applications, and services. However, as their usage increases, so does the risk of API attacks, which have swiftly evolved into one of the most significant cybersecurity threats today. For CISOs, CFOs, and security leaders, understanding the scope of these threats is crucial to building a resilient security strategy. The API attack surface is vast, and its complexity makes it a target for sophisticated adversaries. The growing number of API-related vulnerabilities demands immediate attention.

In today’s highly interconnected ecosystem, APIs are critical access points to sensitive data and business functions. They are integral to cloud services, mobile applications, IoT devices, and microservices architectures. However, their widespread use also amplifies the attack surface, making APIs an attractive target for malicious actors. While many organizations focus on traditional attack vectors, such as phishing and malware, they often overlook API security as a key area for defense.

As API attacks become more frequent and damaging, the traditional approach of securing only external-facing applications is no longer sufficient. API attacks can lead to data breaches, financial losses, and substantial reputational damage. Unfortunately, many organizations still operate with inadequately secured APIs, relying on outdated methods that fail to address modern threats.

API security is no longer a secondary concern—it’s a critical component of any organization’s cybersecurity strategy. With the rise of more complex attack methods, including data scraping, brute force attacks, and API endpoint exploitation, the need for a proactive approach to API security has never been more pressing. This article will examine the strategies, best practices, and frameworks that can help prevent these attacks and safeguard the valuable data transmitted through your APIs.

Understanding API Attacks: What You Need to Know

As APIs become increasingly critical to business operations, understanding the full spectrum of API attacks is paramount for security leaders. These attacks are not just theoretical concerns; cybercriminals actively exploit them to access sensitive data, compromise systems, and disrupt services. In this section, we’ll explore the various API attacks and the vulnerabilities they exploit, providing you with essential knowledge to bolster your organization’s defenses.

Types of API Attacks

API attacks come in many forms, each targeting different aspects of API functionality. Understanding these is the first step toward effective prevention.

• Injection Attacks: Just as SQL injection targets database vulnerabilities, API injection attacks aim to exploit input fields in APIs to execute malicious commands. Attackers can inject harmful code into API requests, leading to unauthorized access to backend systems or complete system compromise.
  
• Data Breaches: APIs often serve as gateways to large volumes of sensitive data, making them prime targets for attackers looking to exfiltrate customer data, payment details, or intellectual property. Improper security measures, such as weak authentication or inadequate access controls, often lead to these breaches.
  
• Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks: When APIs use unencrypted channels or outdated protocols, attackers can intercept data in transit. MITM attacks allow attackers to manipulate, steal, or tamper with the data exchanged between the client and server, potentially causing significant harm.
  
• Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS): By flooding an API with excessive requests, attackers can exhaust resources and cause the API to become unresponsive, interrupting critical services. DDoS attacks are particularly damaging, as they can paralyze services at scale, leading to widespread disruption.
  

Common API Vulnerabilities

Identifying API vulnerabilities is essential to mitigating these attacks. Some of the most frequent vulnerabilities include:

• Inadequate Authentication and Authorization: APIs with poorly implemented authentication mechanisms, such as weak API keys or inadequate token validation, allow attackers to impersonate legitimate users and gain unauthorized access to sensitive data.
  
• Lack of Rate Limiting: Without proper rate limiting, APIs become susceptible to brute-force attacks, in which attackers repeatedly attempt to gain access or exhaust resources through high-volume requests.
  
• Unencrypted Data Transmission: APIs that fail to utilize secure transmission methods, such as HTTPS or encryption protocols, expose sensitive data to interception. This vulnerability is one of the most common entry points for man-in-the-middle attacks.
  
• Insufficient Logging and Monitoring: APIs often lack proper logging of all incoming requests, making it difficult to detect suspicious activities or patterns that may indicate an attack. Without comprehensive monitoring, organizations may fail to identify an attack until significant damage has been done.
  

In conclusion, API attacks are increasingly sophisticated, and their impact can be devastating. By understanding the various types of API attacks and the common vulnerabilities they exploit, security leaders can take informed steps to fortify their API infrastructure and protect valuable data from malicious actors.

The Importance of API Security in the Broader Cybersecurity Strategy

As digital ecosystems evolve, APIs are critical connectors between systems, applications, and data. However, the growing dependence on APIs also introduces significant security risks that can no longer be treated as peripheral concerns. For CISOs and information security leaders, API security is not a standalone issue—it’s a fundamental component of the broader cybersecurity strategy. This section will explore why API security should be integrated into cybersecurity efforts and how neglecting it can jeopardize an organization’s security posture.

APIs as Critical Attack Vectors

APIs are integral to almost every modern digital service, whether cloud-based platforms, mobile applications, or third-party integrations. They are the backbone for accessing, exchanging, and processing sensitive data across environments. However, their accessibility also makes them prime targets for attackers. APIs provide an entry point for adversaries to exploit vulnerabilities in the system, bypass traditional security defenses, and access critical business functions.

The importance of API security lies in the fact that many organizations focus heavily on perimeter security and fail to extend this focus to their APIs. Traditional defenses, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems, are often ineffective in securing API endpoints, especially when APIs are exposed to the public internet or third-party developers. This leaves organizations vulnerable to data breaches, system disruptions, and increasingly sophisticated attacks that specifically target API weaknesses.

Holistic Security Strategy: The Role of API Security

API security isn’t just a technical concern—it’s a business imperative. By ensuring robust protection for APIs, organizations safeguard their systems against direct threats and maintain the integrity of their overall cybersecurity framework. A secure API architecture supports other security layers, such as data encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and network segmentation, providing a comprehensive defense that strengthens the organization’s resilience against cyber threats.

Moreover, integrating API security into the broader strategy is crucial for compliance. Many industries are bound by regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS, which mandate strict controls on data access and transmission. Failure to implement strong API security controls can result in costly fines, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust.

API Security’s Impact on Risk Management and Incident Response

Effective API security reduces an organization’s overall risk profile. By identifying vulnerabilities before they are exploited, organizations can mitigate the chances of costly breaches. Moreover, with the right tools and monitoring, API security can streamline incident detection and response, allowing organizations to identify and contain security incidents before they escalate quickly.

API security must also be part of an organization’s risk management strategy. With APIs being a critical part of business operations, their security status directly affects an organization’s operational continuity. Any compromise to an API could trigger cascading effects, impacting everything from customer trust to financial stability.

API security is no longer an afterthought but a central pillar in any comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. As organizations increasingly rely on APIs to connect data, services, and applications, securing these interfaces is crucial to protect sensitive business assets and maintain operational integrity. By treating API security as a core component of the broader cybersecurity framework, security leaders can ensure that their organizations are resilient in the face of evolving threats.

Preventative Measures: Building a Secure API Infrastructure

Building a secure API infrastructure is the cornerstone of a proactive approach to preventing API attacks. Security measures integrated into the design, development, and deployment phases of APIs can prevent many common vulnerabilities and minimize the risk of exploitation. For CISOs and security leaders, implementing preventative measures isn’t just a technical requirement—it’s a strategic move that strengthens the entire organization’s cybersecurity posture.

Secure API Design: Start at the Blueprint

The foundation of secure API infrastructure begins with its design. Security must be integrated into the architecture from the outset, rather than bolted on as an afterthought. Designing APIs with the principle of least privilege in mind ensures that users and systems have the minimal access required for their function. This prevents over-permissioning, which is one of the most common mistakes in API design that attackers can exploit.

Additionally, it’s crucial to enforce strict authentication and authorization mechanisms early in the design phase. APIs should never rely solely on traditional methods, such as passwords or basic authentication. Instead, robust methods such as OAuth, OpenID Connect, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be prioritized, with token-based systems ensuring secure access management.

Secure Data Transmission: Encrypt Everything

A core component of building a secure API infrastructure is ensuring that all data transmitted between clients and servers is encrypted. Using TLS (Transport Layer Security) ensures that data in transit is protected from man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, a significant risk for APIs exposed to public networks.

Encrypting data ensures confidentiality and integrity—tampering with the data is detected immediately. Moreover, it is equally essential to ensure that sensitive data is never stored in an unencrypted format. API responses, especially those containing personal, financial, or confidential information, should be carefully managed and encrypted both in transit and at rest.

Implementing Rate Limiting and Throttling: Prevent Abuse

A critical security measure in building a secure API infrastructure is rate limiting and throttling. These tools prevent abuse by restricting the requests a client can make to an API within a set time frame. This prevents Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and ensures malicious actors cannot overwhelm your infrastructure with excessive requests.

Additionally, rate limiting helps mitigate credential stuffing and brute-force attacks, as attackers are often limited by the number of login attempts or API calls they can make, thus slowing down their efforts. API developers must strike a balance between enabling legitimate use cases and enforcing restrictions to prevent abuse.

Input Validation and Output Encoding: Guard Against Injection Attacks

Input validation and output encoding are essential security practices to mitigate injection attacks, such as SQL injection, XML injection, or command injection. Input validation ensures that only safe, expected data enters the system, preventing harmful data from being executed during an attack.

APIs must validate the format, length, type, and range of data for every input field. Similarly, output encoding ensures that data returned by the API is sanitized to prevent the rendering of malicious code in a user’s browser or another external system. By adhering to these principles, organizations can prevent one of the most common vectors for API exploits.

Regular API Audits and Updates: Stay Ahead of Emerging Threats

API security isn’t static; it requires continuous attention to evolving threats. Regular security audits should be part of an ongoing strategy to identify vulnerabilities in the API ecosystem. Automated tools can scan for common weaknesses, but manual reviews and penetration testing are essential for identifying subtle or advanced attacks.

Additionally, keeping API components up to date with security patches and fixes is crucial for maintaining a secure environment. APIs often rely on external libraries, dependencies, and services, which can be susceptible to vulnerabilities. Regularly updating these elements ensures that security gaps are closed before they can be exploited.

Building a secure API infrastructure requires a comprehensive and proactive approach that includes strong design principles, encrypted communications, robust access control, and ongoing vigilance. By implementing these preventative measures, organizations can effectively secure their APIs against most potential threats, ensuring a safer and more resilient environment for users and business operations. For CISOs and information security leaders, securing APIs is not just a technical requirement—it’s a strategic decision that strengthens the organization’s overall cybersecurity framework.

Testing and Monitoring: Proactively Identifying API Vulnerabilities

Testing and monitoring are integral to identifying API vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated and targeted, the traditional approach to reactive security is no longer sufficient. For CISOs and information security leaders, continuous testing and real-time monitoring ensure APIs remain resilient to emerging threats. The key is establishing a dynamic, proactive security strategy that evolves with API development and usage.

Continuous Penetration Testing: Go Beyond the Static Tests

Penetration testing is a crucial tool for identifying vulnerabilities within an API. However, traditional penetration testing often takes a reactive approach, which is conducted after an API is deployed. While valuable, this method alone is insufficient. CISOs must prioritize continuous penetration testing that mimics real-world attack patterns in real-time environments to ensure ongoing security.

Automated tools and manual testing should complement each other. Automated testing can regularly scan for common vulnerabilities, such as authentication flaws or weak input validation, while manual testing allows for a deeper exploration of complex vulnerabilities. Combining both approaches ensures a thorough examination of your API infrastructure, uncovering even subtle weaknesses that may be missed in static tests.

Behavioral Monitoring: Detect Anomalies in Real Time

API traffic can be a treasure trove for identifying malicious activity, but it requires vigilant monitoring to detect anomalies before they escalate into major breaches. Implementing behavioral monitoring systems that track API usage patterns is crucial for spotting real-time irregularities. By observing how users interact with APIs, abnormal behavior such as unusual traffic spikes or unexpected access requests can be flagged immediately.

This type of monitoring can also help identify attempts to exploit API vulnerabilities, such as brute-force attacks or unauthorized data access. Leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms to analyze API traffic patterns enhances detection, allowing systems to adapt and identify new attack techniques that may evolve automatically. For security teams, this approach detects ongoing attacks and provides early warning signals to potential weaknesses in API design or access control mechanisms.

Vulnerability Scanning: Automating the Detection of Weak Points

Automated vulnerability scanners are another critical tool in proactive API risk identification. These tools can run regular security checks to detect misconfigurations, outdated components, or known vulnerabilities in the API stack that cybercriminals can exploit. A continuous scanning process ensures that security risks are flagged and addressed in real time, even as APIs evolve or scale.

Integrating these tools with your development pipeline further strengthens the scanning process, enabling security to be a natural part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Automated vulnerability scanning can run parallel to continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), ensuring that newly released API versions are constantly evaluated for potential security gaps before they go live.

Log Management and Real-Time Alerts: Ensuring Transparency and Visibility

Real-time logging and alerting systems must be implemented to ensure proactive identification and resolution of API vulnerabilities. These systems track every request, response, and error, providing valuable insight into API performance and security. Logs are a powerful diagnostic tool when investigating potential breaches, but they must be carefully managed to prevent overload.

Setting up real-time alerts for unusual activities, such as unauthorized access attempts or data breaches, ensures that security teams are notified instantly, enabling rapid response to emerging threats. By combining advanced log management tools with automated alerts, organizations can ensure that vulnerabilities are detected and addressed before they lead to significant damage.

Collaboration with Third-Party Security Tools: Extending API Defense

The API ecosystem often relies on third-party services and libraries, which can inadvertently introduce vulnerabilities. Third-party security tools and APIs should be continually monitored and tested for potential risks. Collaborative security efforts between in-house teams and third-party providers strengthen the overall security posture, as external parties are often the first to spot weaknesses within their services.

Additionally, integrating third-party security solutions into your monitoring tools provides added layers of defense. These solutions can offer vulnerability intelligence and threat feeds that help identify emerging vulnerabilities and attack vectors, ensuring a more comprehensive and up-to-date view of your API security landscape.

Proactive testing and monitoring are essential components of an effective API security strategy. By incorporating continuous penetration testing, behavioral monitoring, automated vulnerability scanning, log management, and collaboration with third-party tools, security leaders can significantly reduce the risk of API attacks. This multi-layered approach enables organizations to stay ahead of emerging threats, ensuring that their APIs remain secure as the cyberattack landscape evolves. For CISOs and security professionals, it is no longer sufficient to secure APIs once; they must be continuously monitored and tested to safeguard critical assets and data in real-time.

Employee Training and Awareness: A Critical Defense Layer

In API security, the human factor is often the weakest link. While advanced tools, such as firewalls and encryption, can safeguard systems, human error or negligence remains a significant vulnerability. For this reason, employee training and awareness should be considered a critical layer of defense in any robust API security strategy. It’s not enough to rely solely on technical measures; employees must understand the security risks associated with APIs and be equipped with the knowledge to prevent potential breaches.

Building a Security-Minded Culture Across All Teams

CISOs and security leaders need to move beyond security as just an IT department responsibility. Every team, from developers to marketing and customer support, interacts with APIs, and they must understand the potential consequences of security lapses. This requires building a company-wide security culture in which API security is viewed as a shared responsibility.

Security awareness training should start from the onboarding stage and continue through regular, interactive sessions. These should include practical insights into API security, such as recognizing phishing attempts, managing sensitive data, and understanding API authentication and access control methods. Security best practices should be incorporated into daily workflows so API security becomes second nature.

Empowering Developers with Secure Coding Practices

Developers are on the frontlines of API security. They are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the APIs at the heart of most applications. Given their direct involvement, equipping them with secure coding practices is essential. Training should go beyond basic security awareness and focus on secure API design.

Topics like input validation, secure authentication mechanisms (e.g., OAuth 2.0, JWT), data encryption, and error handling should be core components of a developer’s training. Developers should also be encouraged to adopt practices such as the principle of least privilege, ensuring that APIs are granted only the permissions necessary for their intended function, thereby reducing the attack surface.

Ongoing Simulation and Scenario-Based Learning

In addition to theoretical knowledge, employees need practical, hands-on experience to understand how to respond to security threats in real-time. Incorporating simulation-based training into your security strategy allows employees to practice responding to API breaches or data leaks in a controlled environment.

These simulated attacks help employees understand the full scope of a breach, from detecting suspicious activity to communicating with internal teams and mitigating damage. Scenario-based learning is beneficial because it can replicate a variety of attack vectors, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), data injection, or credential stuffing, which are standard methods used in API attacks. By facing these simulated challenges, employees can develop the problem-solving skills to prevent or mitigate real attacks.

Elevating the Role of Non-Technical Teams in API Security

While developers and security teams are often seen as the primary responders to security incidents, non-technical teams also play a crucial role in identifying and mitigating potential risks. Sales, customer service, and marketing teams are often clients’ first points of contact and may encounter security vulnerabilities through customer interactions or third-party integrations.

Training these teams to recognize signs of potential API misuse or phishing attacks can significantly reduce the risk of external exploitation. For example, customer-facing employees should be trained to identify suspicious customer requests that might indicate an attempt to exploit an API vulnerability, such as access to customer data outside of standard parameters.

Regularly Updating Training Programs to Stay Ahead of Emerging Threats

API security is an ever-evolving field, and cyber threats continue to grow in sophistication. For employee training to remain effective, it must be updated regularly to reflect the latest API security trends, emerging threats, and new attack vectors. This involves staying current with evolving threat intelligence, regulatory requirements, and the latest best practices for secure API development and operation.

A key part of this ongoing education is fostering collaboration between security teams, external experts, and regulatory bodies to provide employees with up-to-date knowledge. Additionally, security awareness training should be tied to measurable outcomes, such as reducing incidents of credential theft or identifying and fixing flaws in real-time, which helps assess its effectiveness and guide continuous improvement.

Employee training and awareness are fundamental to a holistic API security strategy. A well-trained workforce—equipped with the right tools, knowledge, and processes—forms a critical line of defense against API attacks. Organizations can significantly reduce the risk of breaches by cultivating a security-minded culture, equipping developers with secure coding practices, and ensuring that all teams understand their role in preventing API attacks. A proactive approach to security training ensures that employees are not only responding to security incidents but also preventing them before they occur.

Incident Response: How to Handle an API Breach

Regarding API security, even the most robust defense mechanisms can’t guarantee that an attack won’t happen. The true test of an organization’s security posture occurs when a breach happens. How quickly and effectively an organization responds to an API breach can significantly minimize damage and prevent long-term consequences. An efficient incident response strategy ensures that breaches are managed swiftly, mitigating financial loss, legal ramifications, and reputational damage.

Detection: The First Line of Defense

The first step in handling an API breach is swiftly detecting suspicious activity. Effective detection relies on continuous monitoring of API traffic, employing advanced analytics tools to spot anomalies, such as unusual request patterns, unexpected spikes in API calls, or unauthorized access attempts. Security teams must have a mechanism for real-time alerts when an anomaly is detected, ensuring that breaches are identified before they escalate.

In addition to traditional intrusion detection systems, implementing machine learning-driven security tools can help identify subtle signs of attacks such as credential stuffing, SQL injections, or DDoS attempts. The sooner these irregularities are flagged, the faster an organization can act to minimize exposure.

Containment: Limiting the Breach’s Impact

Once a breach is confirmed, the next priority is to contain it. This involves preventing the attacker from further exploiting the API or accessing additional resources. For this reason, having predefined isolation protocols is critical. In the event of a breach, security teams must quickly assess which APIs have been compromised and either disable them or apply emergency patches to prevent further exploitation.

Automated containment measures, such as API rate limiting, access throttling, or blocking specific IP addresses, can be invaluable during this phase. However, human oversight is essential to ensure that containment measures do not cause collateral damage by affecting legitimate users or services.

Investigation: Understanding the Scope of the Breach

Following containment, organizations must launch a detailed investigation to understand the scope of the breach. This includes identifying which API endpoints were affected, what data or systems were accessed, and how the attacker gained access. Comprehensive logs of API interactions, including time stamps, request details, and response codes, are crucial in piecing together the attack’s timeline.

Incident response teams should also conduct a root cause analysis to determine whether the breach was due to a vulnerability in the API’s design, a misconfiguration, or exploitation of user behavior, such as poor password management. The more precisely the breach is understood, the better equipped the organization will be to prevent future incidents.

Communication: Transparency and Stakeholder Management

Clear and transparent communication becomes essential once the breach is contained and the scope is understood. First, internal stakeholders must be informed of the breach’s details, including the steps to mitigate damage and prevent recurrence. This includes communication with executives, development teams, legal counsel, and public relations professionals.

Externally, affected customers and partners must be notified promptly, with detailed information about the breach and any necessary steps they should take (e.g., password resets, account monitoring). Effective communication helps manage reputation risk and fosters trust with customers by demonstrating that the organization is taking responsible action.

Compliance with regulations such as GDPR or CCPA is crucial at this stage. Depending on the nature of the breach, companies may be required to notify relevant regulatory bodies within a specific timeframe.

Remediation: Strengthening Defenses for the Future

After the breach is under control, the focus shifts to remediation. This phase involves patching vulnerabilities that allowed the breach to occur, hardening API security protocols, and improving overall security posture. If the breach was caused by poor authentication mechanisms, for example, strengthening user verification (e.g., enforcing multi-factor authentication) should be prioritized.

Additionally, API security testing should be intensified to find any lingering weaknesses. This includes vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and revising security controls based on lessons learned from the breach. Beyond addressing the immediate issue, organizations must ensure that their systems are stronger than before the breach occurred, incorporating new layers of defense and adopting more robust security practices.

Post-Incident Review: Learning and Evolving

The incident response process doesn’t end once the breach is contained and remediation is complete. Conducting a post-mortem review is crucial for enhancing the organization’s resilience against future API attacks. In this phase, the organization should evaluate the efficiency of its response efforts, analyze any delays or missteps, and identify opportunities for improvement.

This review should be comprehensive, incorporating input from all relevant teams, including security, development, operations, and communications. The results should lead to updates in the organization’s API security policies, incident response protocols, and employee training programs.

Responding to an API breach is a multi-faceted process that requires swift detection, effective containment, thorough investigation, transparent communication, and comprehensive remediation. By handling API breaches with discipline, precision, and a focus on learning, organizations can recover quickly and strengthen their defenses against future attacks. This proactive approach to incident response is essential to any API security strategy, transforming a potentially damaging event into an opportunity to strengthen overall cybersecurity resilience.

Securing APIs for the Future

As organizations increasingly rely on APIs to fuel their digital transformation, ensuring their security has become an indispensable element of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. APIs are the backbone of modern services, powering everything from mobile apps to cloud-based solutions. As the API landscape evolves, so must the approaches to securing it. The rapid growth of API usage, combined with the rise of sophisticated attack methods, demands that security be integrated from the beginning of the API lifecycle, from development through deployment and beyond.

API Security as a Strategic Imperative

Securing APIs is no longer just a technical concern; it’s a strategic imperative. As cyber threats evolve, CISOs and cybersecurity leaders must prioritize API security as a central pillar of their broader cybersecurity strategies. This means adopting a holistic approach encompassing preventative measures, rigorous testing, continuous monitoring, and responsive incident management. By embedding API security into the organization’s overall security framework, businesses can ensure that their digital services remain resilient, efficient, and secure.

The Role of Automation and Innovation

The future of API security lies in automation and innovation. While manual testing and monitoring still play essential roles, automating API security processes allows organizations to scale their efforts effectively. By leveraging machine learning, AI-powered anomaly detection, and automated vulnerability scanning, organizations can detect and respond to potential threats in real-time. Furthermore, innovation in API security technologies will continue to shape how security measures are applied, with more sophisticated tools emerging to address increasingly complex security challenges.

Continuous Improvement and Adaptation

API security is a dynamic, ongoing process. Cyber threats will continue to evolve and become increasingly sophisticated, so organizations must remain adaptable in their security strategies. Regular audits, post-incident reviews, and sharing of threat intelligence will help businesses identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement, organizations can adapt to the evolving security landscape and ensure their APIs remain robust, secure, and aligned with business objectives.

The need for securing APIs is not just about protecting individual systems or data points; it’s about safeguarding the very foundation of modern business. By taking a proactive, strategic approach to API security, organizations can mitigate risks, prevent attacks, and ensure the longevity and trustworthiness of their digital operations. As the API-driven world expands, prioritizing security today will set the stage for a more secure and resilient digital future.