Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

August 2023

How to Streamline API Development with Consistent API Controls Across Teams

This post is part of a series on becoming a secure API-first company. For a deeper dive, check out the eBook Leading Digital Transformation: Best Practices for Becoming a Secure API-First Company. The growth of APIs isn’t just rapid — it’s a seismic shift. Industry insiders say they plan to introduce more APIs in the next five years than all the APIs they’ve created up until today. And this impending surge will place a serious burden on mission-critical API infrastructure.

What's New in Kong Ingress Controller 2.11?

Since our last Kong Ingress Controller release, we’ve been working hard, and today we’re pleased to announce the immediate availability of Kong Ingress Controller 2.11. KIC 2.11’s standout feature is “last known good configuration”, which allows you to scale your data planes out even if you have a broken configuration on your Kubernetes API server. That’s a strange sentence to write, but it happens more than you’d think.

GraphQL from the Ground Up

Building APIs is a craft. Your API product must be stable, accurate, well documented, performant, and meet the informational demands of your clients — no small task. In this series, we’ll take a close look at GraphQL, a trending API technology that aims to help you deliver efficient and capable APIs. GraphQL’s unique and nuanced view of the client-server relationship offers interesting benefits for API delivery.

WebAssembly in Kong Gateway 3.4

Perhaps the most exciting feature introduced in Kong Gateway in recent years is the addition of WebAssembly support. WebAssembly (or Wasm) was originally developed to bring additional languages beyond JavaScript into the browser. However, nothing stops it from being used in the backend as well! With WebAssembly in Kong Gateway, you’ll be able to build and deploy Wasm filters using languages such as Rust and Go, and configure filter chains to operate on your Kong routes and services.

Reduce API Security Risks with Standardized Governance

APIs serve as the foundation for how software systems and services communicate and exchange data. But unmanaged and unsecured APIs can open up massive vulnerabilities that lead to disastrous security breaches and data leaks without proper governance. With API-related attacks increasing — and set to increase 996% by 2030 — unmanaged APIs are a very real security threat. How do you implement reliable API security without slowing down innovation or blowing up costs?

Improving Day-2 Operations with Kong Gateway

Installing and configuring Kong Gateway is just the beginning. Once you’re in production there’s ongoing effort to keep your API Gateway online and make it’s configuration match what your business needs. Our recent Kong Gateway 3.4 and Kong Ingress Controller 2.11 releases are focused on operator efficiency, and contain a host of features that will make your life easier. Join Veena and Michael as they walk you through some common failure modes of Kong Gateway and how our latest release helps you keep your API Gateway processing traffic 24/7.

Kong Gateway 3.4 for OSS: Bring Your Own Language with WebAssembly!

The Kong Gateway 3.4 for Open Source (OSS) release is massive for our community users. Notably, this release introduces support for Web Assembly (Wasm), bringing a new level of extensibility and customization to Kong Gateway. Read on to learn more about the new capabilities in Kong Gateway 3.4 for OSS.

Kong Gateway 3.4 for Kong Enterprise and Kong Konnect

We’re delighted to announce the release of Kong Gateway 3.4 for Kong Enterprise and Kong Konnect, featuring significant enhancements, such as secrets rotation support in secrets management, expanded plugin support in consumer groups, and more. The highlight of this update is the designation of Kong Enterprise 3.4 as a Long Term Support (LTS) release. Starting now, any customer running Kong Enterprise version 3.4.x.x will receive technical support for three years — until 2026.

API Automation: Do More with Less with this Key to Digital Transformation

Organizations today are looking to do more with less. The solution for many? Digital transformation. While digital transformation isn’t a new concept, the benefits of boosting efficiency, controlling costs, and delivering better customer experiences are obvious in today’s topsy-turvy economic conditions. Digital transformation often involves making the transition from legacy monoliths to modern cloud native microservices-based architectures.

OWASP API Security Top 10: Mitigating Risks with Kong

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP for short) is a not-for-profit entity devoted to improving the security of software. Founded in 2001, OWASP is a global organization that supports thousands of volunteers globally to produce freely-available articles, documentation, tutorials, and tooling. OWASP is best known for its "Top 10" lists, which represent a broad consensus about the most critical security risks to web applications.

Use ChatGPT to Develop a SOAP/XML Custom Kong Konnect Plugin

Today, APIs are based on modern communication patterns: REST, GraphQL, or gRPC. But two decades ago, the majority of Web Services were developed with SOAP/XML. In this blog, we’ll explain how Kong Konnect can manage SOAP/XML Web Services by creating custom plugins and by using ChatGPT. We’ll cover using ChatGPT to develop a Lua custom plugin and how to deploy and test a SOAP/XML custom plugin on Kong Konnect and Kong Enterprise.