This whitepaper explains that legacy security tools such as WAFs, API gateways, and CDNs were built to protect perimeter-based north-south traffic and are fundamentally blind to modern API threats. In API-driven architectures, most traffic is now east-west, flowing between microservices, containers, and internal systems, where attackers exploit misconfigurations, shadow and zombie APIs, parameter tampering, and business logic flaws like broken object level authorization. Because legacy tools lack application context and behavioral awareness, they fail to detect lateral movement, internal abuse, and anomalous API behavior, creating major breach and compliance risks. The paper concludes that modern API security platforms are required to provide continuous discovery, full north-south and east

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