Your CISO Doesn't Understand APIs (And That's Terrifying)

Nobody wants to hear this.

But your Chief Information Security Officer - the person you're paying six figures to keep your company safe - probably couldn't explain a GraphQL introspection attack if their job depended on it.

And the thing is: it literally does.

The Expensive Illusion of Security

Your CISO walks into board meetings with beautiful PowerPoint slides about "zero trust architecture" and "defense in depth." They throw around terms like "threat landscape" and "attack vectors" with the confidence of someone who actually understands what's happening to your business.

Meanwhile, your APIs are vulnerable.

The problem isn't that your CISO is incompetent. The problem is that they're fighting tomorrow's war with yesterday's weapons.

When Experience Becomes a Liability

Most CISOs built their careers during the era of perimeter security. Firewalls, VPNs, network segmentation - they're absolute wizards at this stuff. Put them in front of a network diagram, and they'll spot vulnerabilities that would make your head spin.

But APIs? That's a different game entirely.

Your CISO learned security when applications lived behind walls. Now you're running a business where every customer interaction, every payment, every data exchange happens through APIs that are essentially open doors to the internet.

This is What's Terrifying

Here's what's truly terrifying: most CISOs don't even know that they don't know about API security.

They attend conferences where vendors pitch "API security solutions" that are just rebranded web application firewalls. They implement API gateways and think they've solved the problem. They run vulnerability scanners designed for websites against their REST endpoints and call it a day.

The confidence is real but the competence? Not so much.

The API Blind Spots That Should Keep You Up

Authorization vs Authentication Confusion Your CISO understands that people need to log in. What they don't understand is that logging in and having permission to access specific data are two completely different problems. This is how you end up with authenticated users accessing everyone else's information.

The GraphQL Knowledge Gap GraphQL is eating the world, but your CISO thinks it's just another database query language. They have zero understanding of query complexity attacks, field-level authorization, or introspection vulnerabilities.

The Microservices Multiplication Problem Your CISO learned security when applications were monolithic. Now you'r running 200+ microservices, each with their own APIs, and they're trying to secure them with the same mindset they used for a single web application. It's not going to work.

The Documentation Disaster Your "private" API documentation is probably public. Swagger files on GitHub, Postman collections in shared workspaces, OpenAPI specs in production URLs. Your CISO doesn't even know this is a problem because they don't understand how attackers actually discover and exploit APIs.

The Cost of your CISO Ignorance

This isn't to hurt feelings or cause professional embarrassment. The numbers are brutal:

Companies are losing millions because their security leaders don't understand the attack surface they're supposed to be protecting. Broken authorization in APIs is responsible for more data breaches than any other vulnerability type, but most CISOs are still focused on network perimeter security.

Your CISO's knowledge gap is a business risk.

What Actually Needs to Happen

Your CISO needs to understand that API security isn't web application security with a different name. It's a completely different discipline that requires different tools, different methodologies, and different thinking.

They need to learn about:

• API-specific threat modeling

• Authorization pattern testing

• Data exposure analysis

• API abuse detection

• GraphQL security

• API inventory management

But here's the problem: most CISOs don't even know they need to learn these things.

The Conversation You Need to Have

Someone needs to sit down with your CISO and have a conversation about the gap between their expertise and your actual threat landscape.

I’m not asking you to replace them. It's about acknowledging that the job has evolved faster than their knowledge base.

The question isn't whether your CISO is competent. The question is whether they're competent at the things that matter most to your business today.

The Bottom Line

Your CISO isn’t failing because they’re bad at their job.
They’re failing because they’re using a 2005 playbook to fight a 2025 war.

The battlefield has changed. APIs are the new frontline.
And your security strategy is still stuck in the past.

So ask yourself: How many more warnings do I need before the breach hits home?

If you’re serious about closing the API security gap:

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

Because at this point, “We didn’t know” won’t save you.
And neither will “We thought we were secure.”

Your next breach won’t ask for permission.

See you in the next one. 🔥

Talk soon,
Damilola