Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Imagine you just got a new car with a feature that automatically adjusts the air conditioning based on live weather forecasts. To activate it, you need to connect the car to an external weather service. You could take it to the garage, pay someone to configure it, and wait for the job to be done. Or, you could use a built-in assistant that asks you two simple questions and shows you how to set everything up in minutes. That’s the idea behind Cato’s new API Assistant.

Over the last year, I’ve spent countless hours with CISOs, CTOs, and security architects talking about a new wave of technology that’s changing the game faster than anything we’ve seen before: Agentic AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. If you think AI is still in the “cool demos and pilot projects” stage, think again. We’re already seeing autonomous agents reasoning, remembering, and taking actions in live production environments.

The release of a new KuppingerCole Leadership Compass is always a significant event for the cybersecurity industry, offering a vendor-neutral view of the market's current state. The 2025 edition, focusing on API Security and Management, is critical as it arrives at a pivotal moment for technology. It clearly presents a fact many organizations are just beginning to understand: the crucial connection between the rise of Artificial Intelligence and the necessity for robust API security.

Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) solutions have become increasingly vital in today’s cybersecurity strategies, providing essential defenses against attacks targeting web applications and APIs. It’s no surprise that APIs are growing in popularity, with 80% of companies reporting that more than half of their applications depend on APIs—a figure projected to reach 88% within the next 24 months (ESG Research, 2025).

APIs operate throughout the digital world to support mobile applications, enable cloud capabilities, power GenAI tools, and conduct invisible operations during every digital interaction. As the growth of API usage accelerates, Akamai’s 2024 API Security Impact Report shows that organizations find it difficult to align their security efforts with the expanding risk domain.

With innovation comes risk. As organizations race to build AI-first infrastructure, security is struggling to keep pace. Multi-Agentic Systems – those built on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multi-Component Protocols (MCP) - bring immense potential, but also novel vulnerabilities that traditional tools weren’t designed to handle.

In today’s hyper-connected world, Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) have become one of the most critical layers in a modern security stack. As businesses shift more operations, data, and user experiences online, web apps and APIs are increasingly under siege – from basic bot scraping to sophisticated logic abuse and zero-day exploits.