We looked recently at the technical side of AsyncAPI as the backbone of event-driven API documentation and the role of API governance in relation to it. But what of the executive-level challenges and governance principles you need to consider when implementing API governance in an asynchronous world?
Event-driven APIs are quickly becoming core infrastructure concerns for many enterprises, but without an appropriate and robust model for governance, the promise of responsiveness can quickly become bogged down in operational complexity. That’s why focusing your API governance on the unique elements of asynchronous APIs is so important – it enables you to achieve real-time decision-making based on fresh, flowing data. All in a way that’s scalable, reactive and built for dynamic systems.
Read on to discover the path to the event-driven API governance that will underpin your future success.
Framework focus
Key to governing APIs in this brave new asynchronous world is the focus of your framework. This should explicitly focus on your governance goals of compliance, transparency and quality at scale, as well as on the need to avoid stifling developer creativity or speed – or system autonomy. Your framework should also, of course, align with overarching business goals and tie in with a strategic focus on engaging your people in API governance (rather than simply imposing it and then watching it fail as they find workarounds).
With this in mind, it’s time to consider the unique requirements relating to governing event-driven APIs in distributed, responsive systems driven by streams. This means moving beyond endpoint documentation to governing event flows, schemas and contracts. You’ll need to address new risks as part of this, from event sprawl and schema drift to unauthorized data exposure (while the latter isn’t a new risk, asynchronous APIs present whole new ways of needing to address it).
On the security and resilience front, it’s important to think about how asynchronous systems’ support of horizontal scaling and decoupled team ownership will impact your API governance approach. Essentially, your security governance focus must shift from securing APIs to securing streams and brokers, ensuring a robust and resilient approach across your architecture. Remember that, while platforms facilitate stream-based architectures, governance sits above your tooling and needs to deliver a cross-cutting solution in terms of compliance, security, quality and more.
Event-driven API governance essentials
Enterprises need principled, adaptive, and platform-agnostic governance models that evolve with their architecture if they are to succeed in the asynchronous API world. This means taking a strategic, high-level, and engaging approach to asynchronous API governance, as well as avoiding common event-driven governance pitfalls.
Tyk Streams is ideally positioned to help with this. It solves a range of technical asynchronous API challenges, enabling you to easily receive events and publish to a broker without the need for custom microservices for handling HTTP events. From a governance perspective, it supports you to implement top-tier security, apply robust controls over who should (and shouldn’t) be able to publish events, and apply solutions that bridge the gap between different data streaming formats and API protocols.
Discover Tyk Streams to find out more or speak to the helpful Tyk team.
