Orca API Security

Key Features

• Agentless API discovery – Automatically inventories all managed, unmanaged, internal, and external APIs across the cloud estate without deploying network sensors, agents, or inline proxies.

• Shadow & zombie API detection – Finds undocumented or abandoned APIs that bypass standard API gateways and WAFs, ensuring security teams have zero blind spots.

• API posture management & drift detection – Continuously monitors API configurations against best practices to detect weak or missing authentication, exposed keys, and changes to API endpoints over time (drift).

• Context-aware risk prioritization – Ties API vulnerabilities into Orca’s unified attack-path graph, scoring risks based on network exposure, workload vulnerabilities, and the sensitivity of the data the API can access.

• Sensitive data exposure tracking – Integrates seamlessly with Orca’s DSPM to immediately flag APIs that are transmitting or exposing sensitive “crown jewel” data (PII, PHI, financial records).

• Shift-left CI/CD integration – Allows developers to compare Swagger/OpenAPI specification files against the actual runtime security posture of production applications, catching API flaws before deployment.

Ideal For & Use Cases

Ideal For

• Organizations building modern, microservices-based applications that heavily rely on APIs but lack a centralized, continuously updated inventory of what APIs actually exist in production.

• Teams already utilizing or moving to Orca’s CNAPP who want API visibility natively integrated with their cloud workload, data, and identity security, rather than buying a standalone API tool.

Representative Use Cases

• Shadow API cleanup – Locate and decommission forgotten test APIs or undocumented endpoints that developers spun up outside of the official API gateway.

• Data exfiltration prevention – Identify unauthenticated or poorly secured APIs that have direct backend access to databases storing sensitive customer records.

• API drift monitoring – Get alerted when a developer pushes an update that fundamentally changes an API’s operations, paths, or authentication requirements.

• Comprehensive attack surface mapping – Provide auditors and security teams with a 100% accurate, continuously updated map of all external-facing APIs and their associated risk levels.

Deployment & Technical Specs

• Architecture: API Security is built natively into the Orca Cloud Security Platform; it leverages agentless SideScanning (analyzing workloads out-of-band) and cloud provider API telemetry—no inline network proxies or WAF deployments required.

• Data Sources Covered: Workloads (VMs, containers, Kubernetes), serverless functions, and managed cloud configurations across AWS, Azure, GCP, and other supported environments.

• Discovery Engine: Parses workload storage, configurations, and network settings to identify API endpoints, operations, and attached Swagger/OpenAPI documentation.

• Risk Modeling: Feeds API findings into Orca’s central graph, correlating API misconfigurations with workload CVEs, IAM entitlements, and sensitive data to map full attack paths.

• Performance: Operates entirely out-of-band, meaning API discovery and posture checks cause zero latency to live API traffic and zero performance impact on applications.

• Management & Integration: Managed from the single Orca console; alerts can be routed through standard ticketing integrations (Jira, ServiceNow, Slack) and CI/CD pipelines.

Pricing & Plans

• Licensing Model: API Security is included as a core pillar of Orca’s single, all-inclusive CNAPP SKU—there is no separate, add-on license required for API visibility; pricing scales based on the overall number of protected cloud workloads.

• Indicative Costs: Vendr data shows a median Orca contract value of roughly USD ~$84–86K/year for the full CNAPP stack. AWS Marketplace starter packages typically range from $7K–$30K/month depending on the size of the compute environment.

• Public-sector / G-Cloud: Listed on the UK G-Cloud framework, explicitly offering full Cloud-Native Application Protection (including API discovery and posture management) priced per workload.

Bottom line: you get API Security automatically when you buy the Orca CNAPP; it is not sold as a standalone API security product, making it highly cost-effective for teams consolidating their cloud security stack.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Zero friction and zero latency, as the out-of-band deployment requires no inline proxies that could slow down or disrupt active API traffic.

• Total visibility into shadow APIs that traditional API gateways miss because they only see the traffic explicitly routed through them.

• Deep environmental context ties API risks directly to the underlying workload vulnerabilities and the specific data the API touches.

• Consolidated tooling prevents security teams from having to swivel-chair between a CSPM, a workload scanner, and a separate API security platform.

Cons

• Lacks inline runtime blocking; because it is out-of-band and agentless, it provides exceptional posture management and visibility, but it cannot actively block malicious API payloads (like a WAF or inline API gateway can) in real-time.

• Enterprise pricing model means it is not a viable option if you are strictly looking for a cheap, standalone API scanner and don’t need a full CNAPP.

Final Verdict

Orca Security API Security is a powerful addition for organizations that want to eliminate the massive blind spots created by shadow and zombie APIs. Its agentless approach is brilliant for instantly mapping the API attack surface without the nightmare of routing all traffic through a proxy, and its ability to tie API risks to actual backend data exposure is a massive advantage over siloed tools.

It is less compelling if your primary need is an inline Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) tool to actively block malicious traffic or rate-limit real-time DDoS attacks on your endpoints. However, for gaining absolute visibility, enforcing API posture, and prioritizing risks as part of a holistic cloud security strategy, Orca’s API module makes their broader CNAPP platform incredibly sticky and valuable.