infospace-bench/infospaces/patterns-of-it-securita-architecture/artifacts/entities/pattern-api-gateway-as-security-boundary.md

Pattern: API Gateway as Security Boundary

Status: seed Readiness target: RL3 production Primary owners: Railiance platform, product repos Genesis family: Application/API security

Problem

Public APIs need consistent edge protections before traffic reaches product services.

Context

Use this pattern for public HTTP APIs, tenant-facing APIs, admin APIs, ingress paths, rate limiting, schema checks, authentication, and edge logging.

Forces

• Gateways can centralize common controls.
• Applications still need local authorization and validation.
• Edge policies must not hide tenant or object-level checks.
• Admin APIs require stricter exposure rules than public product APIs.

Solution

Place a managed gateway at API ingress to enforce authentication prechecks, TLS, rate limits, request size, schema constraints, logging, and routing before forwarding to application enforcement points.

Verification

• Unauthenticated or malformed requests are rejected at the edge.
• Rate limits and abuse controls are active.
• Admin surfaces use separate routes and stronger controls.
• Application-level object authorization still runs behind the gateway.

Related Patterns

• Object-Level Authorization Check.
• Schema-First API Security.
• Network Default Deny.
• Central Audit Ledger.