APIClarity: How to Contribute

How to Contribute 

As I’ve mentioned throughout the APIClarity blog series, API attacks are an ever-present, ever-increasing threat for cloud-native applications. Any company with any application running in the cloud could be a target, and data breaches do a lot of harm, both to companies and to individuals. 

Hopefully, throughout the journey so far, you’ve gotten a good sense of why API security is needed and what APIClarity can do to help. But we’re not done yet! API threats are ever-evolving and technology must also continuously evolve to defend against them. 

Let’s work together to combat API breaches. We all have a stake in this, whether we realize it or not. A common target of API breaches is Personally Identifiable Information (PII). I’ve heard people argue that they’re safe because they don’t do any transactions on the web. But what about your bank, or your insurance company, or your medical records? Information is increasingly in the cloud, whether you want it to be or not. We must do everything we can to protect personal data.  

Is the task daunting? Yes. Are the stacks high? Yes indeed. Can we work together to protect our applications and data in the cloud? Yes!  

One of the most amazing things about open source is that it allows people with a vast array of backgrounds, experience, expertise and interests to come together and solve problems for the common good. And with diversity of people and talent comes diversity of solutions. 

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”

Ryunosuke Satoro 

Getting Started 

If you’re just starting out in open source, welcome!   

I’ve written an overview of how to get started with contributing to open source.  

Once you have a general sense of open source, I’d suggest going through the APIClarity blogs and trying it out. 

After that, you’re welcome to file a bug if you find one, improve documentation if you think it’d be helpful, and suggest and develop new features, if you’re feeling inspired. 

APIClarity Resources 

Some helpful links for APIClarity development:

• APIClarity GitHub repo
• Open issues
• Open pull requests
• APIClarity blogs

Conclusion 

The scope of the problem of API security breaches is huge, but I have reasons to be hopeful. I’ve met many terrific people in open-source communities who want to make the world a better place. Let’s tackle API security head-on, work to stay (at least) one step ahead of hackers and secure our cloud applications and data. Together, we can do it! 

Get involved, ask questions, fix bugs, review pull requests, add features, improve documentation, find community. Everyone has a role to play, and everyone’s contribution is so important. We all have a stake in API security, and together we can make the API landscape a safer and more collaborative place to be. 

This is not the end, but the beginning. Join us! 

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Anne McCormick is a cloud architect and open-source advocate in Cisco’s Emerging Technology & Incubation organization.