APIs connect financial services’ payments, identity checks, lending, fraud systems, customer apps, and third-party services. That connectivity expands what firms can do—and the number of interfaces that need protection. Akamai’s 2026 study found that 96% of its surveyed financial-services organizations reported at least one API-related security incident in 2025. The figure covers banks, brokerages, insurers, and fintech organizations; it is not a finding that 96% of all fintech firms suffered confirmed data breaches.
How common are API security incidents in the financial services sector?
In its 2026 financial-services study, Akamai surveyed 310 security leaders at organizations in 10 countries. Of those surveyed, 96% said their organization had experienced at least one API-related security incident in 2025. Among organizations affected, 48% reported four or more incidents within a 12-month span.
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These are respondents’ reports in a vendor-published survey, not an independently verified census. The sample includes financial-services organizations beyond fintech, and “API-related security incident” is broader than a confirmed breach. The result should not be restated as a worldwide fintech breach rate.
A separate Akamai survey of 1,840 security professionals across six industries and 10 countries reported that 87% had experienced an API-related incident in the past year. That is a different population and measure, so it should not be combined with the financial-services result.
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What is the average financial impact of an API security incident for these organizations?
Akamai’s 2026 financial-services findings put the average annual financial impact of API security incidents at approximately US$620,000 for the organizations covered. This is an annual impact figure, not an average cost per incident. It reflects reported impacts and should not be treated as a guaranteed cost for an individual firm.
Which types of API incidents occur most frequently in this industry?
In Akamai’s financial-services findings, API data breaches or leaks were the most commonly reported incident type, cited by 40%. Attacks on AI-linked APIs were also frequently reported, at 39%. These figures describe incident types reported in the study; they do not establish that AI adoption caused the incidents.
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AI-enabled services and third-party integrations can add endpoints and data flows that need oversight. The practical concern is exposure: an API may return data, accept actions, or connect systems in ways that create risk if access controls, configuration, and monitoring are inadequate.
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In Akamai’s detailed key findings, 65% of financial-services leaders identified API misconfiguration as an underlying cause. This is respondents’ attribution, not independent proof that misconfiguration caused every incident. Akamai’s PDF also includes a separate 64% graphic; the detailed text gives 65%, so the latter is used here.
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Misconfiguration can include exposed or outdated endpoints, overly permissive access, weak settings, or unnecessary interfaces left available. The OWASP API Security Top 10 (2023) offers a useful taxonomy of related weaknesses, including broken object-level authorization, broken authentication, excessive resource consumption, security misconfiguration, improper inventory management, and unsafe use of third-party APIs.
Why is the current level of API visibility considered insufficient for compliance?
Knowing that an API exists is not the same as knowing what information it exposes or changes. Akamai reports that 78% of surveyed financial-services organizations claimed to have a full API inventory, yet 51% said they did not know which inventoried APIs return sensitive data. Its ebook executive summary separately says 27% had both a complete inventory and knowledge of which APIs expose sensitive data. These are distinct stated measures; they should not be combined into an inferred rate.
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- API Security in Action
- Manning Publications
- ABIS BOOK
For compliance, the relevant question is whether an organization can identify sensitive data flows, assign ownership, and apply the legal and contractual duties that actually govern its services and jurisdictions. The survey does not establish a blanket compliance failure or determine which rules apply to any particular firm. The Federal Reserve’s cybersecurity and financial system resilience report series provides regulator context, but it is not the source of Akamai’s API incident statistic.
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Akamai reports that 74% of financial-services leaders had increased focus on API security over the prior year, while 41% ranked securing AI technologies as their top cybersecurity priority. Turning that attention into risk reduction calls for controls across discovery, data handling, authorization, testing, and operations.
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- Keep an API inventory current. Track hosts, endpoints, deployed versions, and interfaces used by AI applications and third-party services. Remove or restrict deprecated, debug, and unnecessary interfaces.
- Map sensitive data flows. Identify which APIs return or modify customer, identity, account, and payment data. Classify that data and assign owners who understand the applicable legal and contractual duties.
- Authorize each object and action. Check permissions on every request that uses client-supplied identifiers or data. A successful login does not prove that a caller may access a particular account, payment, or record.
- Limit exposed properties. Return and accept only the fields an operation needs. Validate response schemas and avoid automatically binding untrusted client fields to internal objects.
- Control resource consumption. Set limits for request size, batch operations, returned records, execution time, and paid downstream calls. These limits help contain denial-of-service risk and unexpected costs.
- Test throughout the API lifecycle. Add security testing to development and CI/CD workflows rather than testing only functional behavior. Monitor runtime activity and investigate anomalous access, data transfers, and calls to AI-linked endpoints.
- Review integrations as part of the attack surface. Examine permissions, data flows, and security posture for third-party and AI-connected APIs; familiarity with a provider is not a security control.
OWASP’s 2023 API Security Top 10 and its guidance on unrestricted resource consumption can help teams structure reviews around specific API weaknesses.
These measures address distinct risks; no single control, firewall, platform, or checklist guarantees that breaches will not occur. Akamai executive Sean Lyons said in the company’s April 28, 2026 press release: “If you’re adopting AI, API security can’t be an afterthought. You need the foundation to actually trust the AI systems you’re building.” That is a vendor executive’s perspective, rather than independent expert consensus.
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