The Hidden Cost of Fast APIs

Hey hey,
Let’s talk speed.

Fast APIs. Fast sprints. Fast deployments.
Everyone’s chasing velocity like it’s the only metric that matters.

“Move fast and break things,” right?

Except nobody talks about what happens after you break things.
Or worse—what breaks quietly in the background while you celebrate your latest release.

Let me show you what I mean 👇

The Real Cost of Moving Fast

When teams optimize for speed and ignore structure, here’s what piles up:

– Shadow APIs pop up.
– Endpoints go undocumented—nobody remembers who built them or why.
– Sensitive data exposure happens because… who had time to set proper auth?
– Security gets slapped on after deployment—if at all.

And when a breach happens?
You’re stuck playing incident response instead of building.

Nobody Gets Breached for Moving Slow

Most of the API breaches I’ve seen didn’t happen because someone was dumb.
They happened because someone was moving too fast.

You know what’s really expensive?
Fixing what could’ve been avoided with a 1-hour governance meeting.

The Tradeoff You’re Actually Making

Speed isn’t the enemy.
But unaccountable speed—with no visibility, no standards, no review process?
That’s just gambling.

• It’s not “innovation.”

• It’s not “agile.”

• It’s technical debt in disguise—and you will pay it down, one breach at a time.

What Moving Smart Looks Like

If I were building fast today, here’s what I’d bake in:

• Inventory tracking from day one

• API versioning policies so old stuff doesn’t become attack surfaces

• Mandatory reviews for new endpoints

• Security champions on each team

• Real-time monitoring tied to your API gateway

Move fast? Sure.
But build a system that makes ‘safe fast’ possible.

Final Thought

Speed is a weapon.
But when it’s not controlled, it turns on you.

“Move fast and break things” was cute in 2012.
In 2025? It’s how companies go out of business.

You don’t have to slow down.
You just have to stop pretending speed is an excuse for chaos.

That’s it for today.

Need help securing your APIs under pressure?
That’s what I do.

👉 Book a free consultation with me here.
👉 Follow me on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with the latest in API security.

See you in the next one. 🔥

Talk soon,
Damilola