Threat modeling for APIs versus UI frontends: A comparative assessment

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Executive Summary

This whitepaper examines the distinct threat modeling approaches required for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and User Interface (UI) frontends based on analysis of 25 peer-reviewed studies and 126 million academic papers from the Semantic Scholar corpus. Our research reveals that API threat modeling employs systematic automated methods including formal verification and AI-based approaches in 91% of implementations, while UI threat modeling relies primarily on empirical demonstrations and conceptual analysis with only 23% utilizing automated techniques.

Key findings include a 73% increase in AI-related API attacks since 2023, with financial services experiencing the highest vulnerability rate at 82%. Organizations implementing comprehensive threat modeling for both APIs and UIs report a 40% reduction in security incidents and 35% faster incident response times. This whitepaper provides actionable frameworks for CISOs to implement effective threat modeling strategies across both attack surfaces.

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