Why Organizations Are Evaluating API Security Providers in Saudi Arabia
Every riyal flowing through Saudi Arabia’s digital economy, every Open Banking transaction, government e-service, and FinTech payment travels through an API. And right now, those APIs are being targeted faster than most organizations in the Kingdom can discover, inventory, and secure them.
According to Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), the digital economy contributed 16% of national GDP in 2024, while the Kingdom’s ICT sector generated SAR 249.8 billion in annual revenues. Separately, the Communications, Space & Technology Commission (CST) reported that Saudi Arabia’s communications and technology market reached SAR 180 billion in 2024. As Vision 2030 accelerates digital transformation across banking, healthcare, government, smart cities, and e-commerce, the Kingdom’s API attack surface continues to expand.
At the same time, the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) and the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) have made their expectations clear: organizations must demonstrate continuous security controls across digital services, applications, and APIs. Not documentation. Not intent. Evidence.
For organizations operating APIs in Saudi Arabia, the challenge is no longer whether APIs need protection, it is whether existing security controls can satisfy both modern attack patterns and evolving regulatory expectations.
The Regulatory Reality: What NCA ECC and SAMA Actually Require
API security is no longer just a cybersecurity best practice in Saudi Arabia , it is increasingly tied to regulatory compliance. Both the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) and the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) expect organizations to demonstrate continuous protection of digital services and internet-facing applications.
NCA ECC-2:2024
NCA’s Essential Cybersecurity Controls (ECC-2:2024) require organizations to implement secure access controls, continuous monitoring, logging, and protection of exposed digital services. For API-driven environments, this means maintaining visibility and security controls across all externally accessible endpoints.
SAMA Open Banking Framework
SAMA’s Open Banking requirements place APIs under direct regulatory oversight. Licensed providers must implement controls such as mutual TLS (mTLS), OAuth authentication, object-level authorization, rate limiting, security logging, and API-specific security testing. For organizations operating in regulated sectors, API security is no longer an optional layer of protection; it is a foundational control for demonstrating compliance and reducing operational risk.
Why Traditional Security Controls Are Not Enough
Many organizations assume their existing firewall or WAF already protects APIs. In reality, most traditional security controls were designed to inspect web traffic, not understand API behavior, object relationships, authentication flows, or business logic.
Modern API security platforms fill these gaps by providing continuous discovery, behavioral monitoring, and API-specific threat detection capabilities.
Core Capabilities to Evaluate in Any API Security Platform:
Organizations operating under NCA ECC or SAMA requirements should evaluate providers against these capabilities rather than relying solely on compliance claims or traditional application security controls.
The Industries With the Most to Lose in Saudi Arabia
As Vision 2030 accelerates digital banking, e-government, healthcare modernization, and connected infrastructure initiatives, APIs have become critical to how organizations deliver services. This makes API security a growing priority across both regulated and high-growth sectors.
Financial Services & FinTech
Open Banking APIs and digital payment platforms operate under direct SAMA oversight and face elevated risks from fraud, account takeover, and API abuse.
Government & Public Sector
Saudi Arabia’s rapid expansion of digital citizen services increases the need for secure and continuously monitored APIs under NCA requirements.
Healthcare
Telehealth, electronic health records, and healthcare interoperability initiatives rely on APIs to exchange sensitive patient data securely.
Energy & Critical Infrastructure
Increasing connectivity between IT, OT, and partner systems expands the attack surface for critical operations.
E-Commerce & Digital Services
APIs supporting payments, mobile apps, and customer accounts are frequent targets for bots, credential attacks, and automated abuse.
Regardless of industry, organizations must continuously discover, monitor, and secure APIs to reduce both cyber risk and compliance exposure.
Top 5 API Security Providers in Saudi Arabia
1. Prophaze API Security Built for Regulated Markets
Prophaze combines API discovery, OWASP API Top 10 protection, behavioral threat detection, bot mitigation, and Layer 7 protection in a unified platform designed for modern cloud-native environments.
Key strengths:
- Automatic discovery of shadow and unmanaged APIs
- OWASP API Security Top 10 protection, including BOLA and broken authentication
- Behavioral analytics to detect API abuse, credential attacks, and zero-day threats
- Cloud, Kubernetes, on-premises, and hybrid deployment options
- Audit logging and reporting that support NCA ECC and SAMA compliance initiatives
Recognized in Gartner Market Guides for WAAP and API Security and featured in KuppingerCole’s Leadership Compass for WAAP.
2. Cequence Security
Cequence focuses on API security and bot management, offering API discovery, behavioral analytics, and protection against automated attacks across enterprise environments.
Consideration: Typically geared toward larger enterprises and may require greater operational investment and tuning.
3. Akamai API Security
Akamai combines API security with its global edge network, providing API discovery, threat protection, and DDoS mitigation at scale.
Consideration: Policy management and deployment complexity can increase in large environments.
4. F5 Distributed Cloud API Security
F5 provides API discovery, posture management, and runtime protection across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures.
Consideration: Advanced deployments may require specialized expertise and ongoing management.
5. Imperva API Security
Imperva offers API protection as part of its broader WAAP platform, combining discovery, monitoring, and compliance-focused security controls.
Consideration: Policy optimization and large-scale environments may require dedicated security resources.
How to Choose the Right Provider
The Saudi API security market includes providers across every delivery model, pure-play API security, cloud-native WAF, and enterprise security platforms. Rather than evaluating on compliance documentation alone, organizations should assess four core technical capabilities:
- Automatic API discovery including shadow and undocumented APIs
- Behavioral ML-based detection for business logic abuse and zero-day threats
- Full OWASP API Top 10 enforcement with object-level authorization controls
- Deployment flexibility across cloud, Kubernetes, hybrid, and on-premises environments
The providers that deliver all four in a unified platform, with fast onboarding and low operational overhead, are best positioned to meet both NCA ECC and SAMA requirements sustainably.
Why Saudi Organizations Choose Prophaze for API Security
As APIs become critical to banking, government services, healthcare, and digital commerce, organizations need security that extends beyond traditional perimeter defenses. Prophaze combines API Security, WAF, Bot Mitigation, and Layer 7 DDoS Protection in a unified platform that continuously discovers APIs, protects against OWASP API Top 10 risks, detects automated abuse and emerging threats, and helps organizations support NCA ECC and SAMA security requirements across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.
Key Capabilities:
- Automatic API discovery and shadow API detection
- OWASP API Security Top 10 protection
- AI-powered behavioral threat detection
- Cloud, on-premises, Kubernetes, and hybrid deployment support
- Compliance-ready logging, reporting, and SIEM integration
- No SDKs or application code changes required
Compliance Requires More Than Documentation Are You Ready to Strengthen Your API Security Posture?
NCA ECC and SAMA Open Banking requirements demand continuous visibility, monitoring, and enforcement across digital services. Organizations can no longer rely on periodic assessments or manual API inventories. Prophaze helps security teams continuously discover APIs, enforce security controls, detect threats, and generate the evidence required for compliance audits.
- Discover, monitor, and protect every API, including the ones you don't know exist.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. Does NCA ECC-2:2024 specifically require API security controls?
While ECC-2:2024 does not prescribe a specific API security product category, its technology protection, access control, secure development, and continuous monitoring requirements increasingly require dedicated API security controls in modern API-driven environments. API discovery, monitoring, access enforcement, and audit logging help organizations demonstrate compliance with these requirements.
2. What does SAMA's Open Banking framework require from an API security perspective?
SAMA’s Open Banking framework requires strong API authentication, authorization, consent management, encryption, logging, rate limiting, and security testing. Organizations must demonstrate that API security controls are continuously enforced across Open Banking services.
3. Why is API discovery important for compliance?
Many organizations operate undocumented, deprecated, or shadow APIs that are unknown to security teams. Continuous API discovery ensures all exposed APIs are inventoried, monitored, and governed under security policies and compliance controls.
4. How is API security different from a traditional WAF?
Traditional WAFs focus primarily on web application attacks such as SQL injection and XSS. API security platforms provide deeper visibility into API behavior, schema validation, object-level authorization, API discovery, and protection against OWASP API Security Top 10 risks.
5. Can API security help meet NCA and SAMA audit requirements?
Yes. API security platforms provide continuous monitoring, logging, enforcement, discovery, and reporting capabilities that help organizations demonstrate compliance with NCA ECC, SAMA Open Banking requirements, and internal governance standards.
