Multi-Layer API Discovery is Different
Invicti correlates discovery data from source code, network traffic, API gateways, and web applications to continuously maintain a complete API inventory for scanning.
APIÂ discovery
No More Doubting Your API Inventory
Automatically discover APIs across source code, gateways, runtime traffic, and web applications to build a complete and continuously updated API inventory.
3600+ Top Organizations Trust Invicti
Traditional API Discovery Has Problems
Teams have incomplete inventories
Teams don’t know how many APIs they actually have. Undocumented APIs exist outside official inventories, leaving some attack surfaces invisible.
Discovery depends on developers
Most tools require teams to manually provide schemas, endpoints, and authentication details. Developers rarely have this information, slowing or blocking testing.
Modern apps create API sprawl
Microservices, mobile apps, and machine-to-machine integrations constantly create new endpoints. APIs evolve faster than security teams can track them.
Most tools miss hidden APIs
Web crawling or traffic monitoring alone can only reveal part of the API ecosystem. Many APIs remain hidden because they aren’t tied to a UI or active traffic.
Layer 1: Source code
Modern applications often define APIs directly within source code.
Invicti connects directly to developer repositories like GitHub, GitLab
and Bitbucket.
From the codebase, the platform can:
- Identify API endpoints defined in code
- Locate API specification files
- Generate schemas when documentation is missing
This allows APIs to be discovered before they are deployed, giving security teams visibility earlier in the development lifecycle.
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Layer 2: Application scanning
Invicti's industry-defining DAST identifies APIs automatically while scanning your web applications.
Our engine:
- Crawls web applications
- Observes API calls made by the UI
- Extracts API endpoints automatically
This allows security teams to quickly identify APIs connected to web applications and add them to the API inventory without manual configuration.
Layer 3: Gateway integration
Find APIs through gateway platforms such as:
- Kong
- Apigee
- AWS API Gateway
- Azure API Management
Invicti integrates directly with these gateways to retrieve API endpoints, schemas and documentation. This allows security teams to automatically discover APIs already deployed within their infrastructure.
Layer 4: Network Traffic Analysis
Some APIs only become visible once they're running in production. Invicti can analyze network traffic to detect API activity across infrastructure such as:
- F5
- NGINX
- Cloudflare
- Kubernetes environments
By observing requests and responses, Invicti can identify active endpoints, extract API structures and reconstruct schemas. This helps discover undocumented APIs and endpoints that may not appear in application code or documentation.
What Multi-Layer API Discovery Unlocks
No more manual API setup
Security teams no longer need developers to supply schemas, authentication tokens, or endpoint locations before testing can begin.
Discover APIs before production
Source code repository mining reveals APIs during development so security teams can test them earlier in the lifecycle.
Uncover shadow and hidden APIs
Multi-layer discovery identifies undocumented, headless, and service-to-service APIs that traditional discovery methods miss.
Auto-generate API specs
Invicti extracts or reconstructs API schemas so APIs can be scanned without manual configuration.
Continuous, complete API inventory
Correlating discovery from code, gateways, traffic, and applications creates a continuously updated view of the API attack surface.
Enable immediate security testing
Once APIs are discovered, they are automatically prepared for DAST scanning and integrated into the security testing pipeline.
What customers say
“For more websites, we now don’t need to go externally for security testing. We can fire up Invicti, run the tests as often as we like, view the scan results, and mitigate to our hearts’ content. As a result, the budget we were spending every year on penetration testing decreased by approximately 60% almost immediately and went down even more the following year, to about 20% of our initial spending.”
- Brian Brackenborough, CISO
“The software is an important part of my security strategy which is in progress toward other services at OECD. And I find it better than external expertise. I had, of course, the opportunity to compare expertise reports with Invicti ones. Invicti was better, finding more breaches.”
- Andy Gambles, Senior Analyst
“We scan all our websites for vulnerabilities as they are being developed. These scans are also used to satisfy a yearly scanning requirement from our governing organization. We have identified and corrected over 100 vulnerabilities with Invicti.”
- David Pope, Department of Education
“As opposed to other web application scanners we used, Invicti is very easy to use and does not require a lot of configuring. An out of the box installation of Invicti web application security Scanner can detect more vulnerabilities than any other web application security scanner we have used so far.”
- Perry Mertens, Audit Supervisor
Frequently asked API discovery questions
How does Invicti discover APIs automatically?
Invicti uses multi-layer API discovery to identify endpoints across your environment. The platform gathers API information from web application scans, API gateways, network traffic analysis, and source code repositories. By correlating these discovery sources, Invicti builds a complete API inventory without requiring developers to manually provide schemas or endpoint lists.
Can Invicti discover APIs before they reach production?
Yes. Invicti can connect directly to source code repositories such as GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket to identify APIs defined in code. This allows APIs to be discovered earlier in the development lifecycle so security testing can begin before deployment.
How does Invicti handle authentication for API scanning?
Invicti can detect and work with common authentication mechanisms such as tokens, cookies, and OAuth. During discovery and scanning, the platform identifies authentication patterns and uses them to perform authenticated testing of API endpoints.
Does API discovery stay up to date as applications change?
Yes. Invicti integrates with CI/CD pipelines and development repositories to detect new or modified APIs as applications evolve. Newly discovered APIs are automatically added to the inventory and prepared for security testing.
What types of APIs can Invicti discover?
Invicti can discover many types of APIs, including:
- REST APIs
- GraphQL APIs
- mobile backend APIs
- service-to-service APIs
- headless APIs
- undocumented or shadow APIs
This allows security teams to identify APIs that may not appear in documentation or application inventories.
Does Invicti require API schemas to run API scans?
No. Many API security tools require developers to manually provide OpenAPI or Swagger specifications before testing can begin. Invicti automatically extracts or reconstructs API schemas from discovery sources such as code, gateways, and network traffic. This removes the need for manual setup.
How is this different from API monitoring tools?
API monitoring tools primarily analyze runtime traffic to detect attacks or suspicious activity. Invicti focuses on proactive API security testing. The platform discovers APIs across multiple sources and then actively tests them for vulnerabilities such as those listed in the OWASP API Top 10.
What happens after APIs are discovered?
Once APIs are identified, Invicti automatically prepares them for testing by extracting or generating API schemas and mapping endpoint relationships. The APIs are then passed to the DAST engine, which scans them for vulnerabilities such as broken access control, injection flaws, and authentication weaknesses.
Discover shadow APIs, validate real risks, and secure every endpoint.
