Alternatives to APIsec for VP of Engineerings

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box tool. You submit a target URL and receive a risk score from A to F along with prioritized findings. It does not require agents, SDKs, or any code access, and it works with any language, framework, or cloud. The scanner only issues read-only methods such as GET and HEAD, with text-only POST used for LLM probes, and completes a scan in under a minute.

The scanner covers 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023), including authentication bypass, JWT misconfigurations, BOLA and IDOR, BFLA and privilege escalation, property authorization, input validation, rate limiting, data exposure, encryption, SSRF, inventory management, and LLM/AI security. It maps findings directly to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10. For other frameworks, it helps you prepare for and supports audit evidence relevant to controls described in those regimes.

For accounts on the Starter tier and above, authenticated scanning is available using Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and cookies. Domain verification is enforced through a DNS TXT record or an HTTP well-known file so that only the domain owner can scan with credentials. The scanner forwards a strict allowlist of headers, including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-*.

The tool parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 documents with recursive $ref resolution. It cross-references spec definitions against runtime behavior to surface undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. This helps validate that the implementation aligns with the published contract and highlights discrepancies that could lead to exposure.

With the Pro tier, you can schedule rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly. The system detects diffs between scans, reporting new findings, resolved issues, and score drift. Alerts are sent via email at a rate-limited cadence of one per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks are delivered with auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures. Integration options include a web dashboard, a CLI via the middlebrick npm package, a GitHub Action that can fail the build on low scores, an MCP server for AI coding assistants, and a programmatic API for custom workflows.

middleBrick is a scanner that detects and reports with remediation guidance; it does not fix, patch, block, or remediate. It does not perform active SQL injection or command injection testing, which requires intrusive payloads outside its scope, and it does not detect business logic vulnerabilities that demand domain understanding. Safety measures include read-only methods only, blocking private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints, and ensuring customer data is deletable on demand and never used for model training.