This ASE admin guide covers the following deployment modes:

Inline ASE
ASE receives API client traffic and then routes the traffic to a backend API gateway or directly to App Servers. ASE applies real time security and passes API metadata to the ABS Engine for AI powered advanced attack detection. ABS engine notifies ASE of attacks, and ASE then blocks the rogue clients.
Sideband ASE
An API gateway receives API client traffic and then makes API calls to pass API metadata to ASE for processing. ASE passes the API metadata to the ABS Engine for AI powered advanced attack detection. ABS engine notifies ASE of attacks, and ASE then works with API gateway to block inbound rogue client requests. See ASE sideband chapter for more information.

Diagram of Inline and Sideband ASE deployments

The following tables show a summary of security and admin features available in each deployment option.

Security Features Inline Sideband

Interface to ABS AI Engine for AI powered attack detection.

Yes

Yes

API deception where decoy APIs look like legitimate APIs to hackers. After accessing a decoy API, a hacker is quarantined, plus activity information is collected.

Yes

Yes

Real-time client blocking based on lists with ASE detected attacks, ABS AI Engine detected attacks, or customer-built lists. Blocking can be based on OAuth tokens, API keys, user names, cookies, and IP addresses.

Yes

Yes

Black and whitelist management of tokens, API keys, cookies, IP addresses.

Yes

Yes

Real-time blocking of API clients with traffic that deviates from API attributes.

Yes

No

Dynamic mapping of public API identity to private internal API identity.

Yes

No

Custom API error messages prevent disclosure of sensitive error information.

Yes

No

Admin Features Inline Sideband

Simple deployment with modular JSON configuration files.

Yes

Yes

Live updates to add or remove without loss of traffic or stopping services.

Yes

Yes

Obfuscation of keys and passwords.

Yes

Yes

Active-active clustering that supports scaling and resiliency: all nodes are peers and self-learn the configuration, traffic information, and security updates.

Yes

Yes

Syslog information messages sent to Syslog servers in RFC 5424 format.

Yes

Yes

Automatic API discovery discovers API JSON configuration data.

Yes

Yes

CLI and REST API for management and automation tool integration.

Yes

Yes

Linux PAM-based administrator authentication with existing Linux tools.

Yes

Yes

Audit log captures administrative actions for compliance reporting.

Yes

Yes

Distributed inbound flow control limits client traffic and server traffic.

Yes

No

Multiprotocol Layer 7 routing and load balancing of WebSocket, REST API.

Yes

No

Secure connection between ASE and ABS. Secure connection also between ASE and ASE REST APIs.

Yes

Yes