How Traceable Leverages DigitalOcean for API Security Education and Internal Testing

In today’s cloud-first, API-driven world, organizations face the challenge of securing the growing number of APIs that power their applications and services. Traceable, the industry’s leading API security company, helps businesses achieve API visibility and attack protection. Their intelligent, context-aware solution enables API discovery, security testing, and attack detection and protection, minimizing risk while maximizing the value APIs deliver.

Since its founding, Traceable has relied on DigitalOcean’s cloud platform to provide the flexible and cost-effective infrastructure to power its educational platform, which offers workshops on API security to prospective and current customers. Traceable also puts DigitalOcean to work behind the scenes, using it to rigorously test and certify their own security sensors, making sure they’re up to standards across different setups. The company leverages DigitalOcean Droplets, Managed Kubernetes, Volumes Block Storage, and other cloud products to educate its global enterprise customer base across industries like banking, fintech, healthcare, insurance, and high-tech.

Pioneering a unique approach to API security

APIs have become the backbone of modern software development, enabling applications to communicate and exchange data. However, they have also emerged as a prime target for cybercriminals, expanding the application attack surface and with it, business risk… Traceable was founded to address this critical security gap and help organizations protect APIs at every stage of their lifecycle from development to deployment. .

What differentiates Traceable is its comprehensive and context-aware approach to API security. . Traceable is the only API security platform that captures, correlates and analyzes all API-related activity over time, across the entire API ecosystem, not just the edge. This data provides the foundation for Traceable’s complete API security platform—from API discovery and pre-deployment testing, to real-time attack detection and fraud and abuse protection. Using distributed tracing and machine learning, the platform analyzes API activity to identify anomalous behavior and block threats. Their platform also helps businesses maintain compliance with relevant regulations and organizational security policies. .

“We reduce security risk at every stage of the API lifecycle. From development to deployment to production, , the full lifetime of the APIis covered by Traceable.” — Arpit Patel, Chief Customer Officer at Traceable

Traceable primarily serves enterprise customers, focusing on industries with heightened security and compliance needs like banking, fintech, healthcare, insurance, and high-tech. These organizations use Traceable to prevent API-based threats like account takeovers, fraud, and data breaches. In just a few years since launching, Traceable has seen impressive traction, growing revenue by 300% in the past year.

The company has built a global, remote-first team to support its growth, with over 165 employees across the United States, India, and other countries. Traceable has attracted top talent worldwide while providing localized support to its diverse customer base.

Deploying on DigitalOcean for simplicity and savings

Traceable turned to DigitalOcean for two key initiatives, relying on the flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability of our cloud for on-demand educational workshops and comprehensive internal certification processes.

“DigitalOcean can do a lot for enterprise needs and developer productivity. If you don’t have a strong use case for the complexity of other clouds and want to focus on simplicity and ease of deployment, you can save significantly with DigitalOcean.” — Arpit Patel, Chief Customer Officer at Traceable

Empowering customers through on-demand API security workshops

Traceable uses DigitalOcean to host interactive workshops aimed at educating customers about API security through hands-on experiences. These workshops deploy Traceable’s entire platform on DigitalOcean, complete with a sample application, to demonstrate API security concepts. Participants learn about API inventory management, attack simulation, security implementation using Traceable’s tools, and automated API testing methodologies.

Our cloud platform’s flexibility enables Traceable to deliver educational content efficiently, providing a seamless experience for workshop attendees. Their educational platform uses DigitalOcean Droplets and Managed Kubernetes for hosting. They also employ DigitalOcean Load Balancers to distribute traffic and ensure high availability, while DigitalOcean Volumes are used to persist data. This approach is robust and scalable, supports learning while demonstrating Traceable’s security solutions cost-effectively.

“Using DigitalOcean allows us to manage costs effectively, scaling resources based on the number of attendees and events,” says Patel. “DigitalOcean’s platform ensures a smooth and efficient setup for each workshop, minimizing logistical overhead.”

Streamlining internal certification with scalable infrastructure

DigitalOcean also plays an important role in Traceable’s internal certification processes, particularly in performance benchmarking for their sensors. The company conducts extensive testing across thousands of unique OS versions, hardware configurations, and data collection setups to ensure the best data collection mechanisms.

DigitalOcean’s transparent pricing model has enabled Traceable to operate this initiative efficiently, keeping its cloud budget in check. This is particularly valuable as Traceable continues to innovate and expand its API security offerings, ensuring that their sensors meet the highest standards of performance and reliability.

“DigitalOcean’s on-demand capacity helps us manage the costs associated with large-scale, diverse testing environments,” Patel explains. “The platform’s ability to scale resources as needed ensures that we can handle the complexity and volume of our certification processes without incurring prohibitive costs.”

Fostering a collaborative security partnership

Beyond leveraging DigitalOcean’s cloud products, Traceable has built a close partnership with the DigitalOcean security team over the past three years. The two teams connect regularly to exchange insights and align their security postures, enabling Traceable to better serve its customers while hardening its defenses.

“The DigitalOcean security team is a very passionate group of people and one of the best groups we work with,” Patel adds, highlighting the value of this collaborative relationship in enhancing Traceable’s overall security approach.

Scaling API security for the future

At DigitalOcean, we value Traceable as a customer and appreciate being their customer as well. We use their innovative API security platform and maintain a partnership that has spanned years. Traceable continues innovating, with plans to launch new AI fraud detection and abuse protection capabilities. Traceable plans to scale its usage of DigitalOcean to meet customer demand globally.

“Leveraging DigitalOcean for both on-demand workshops and internal certification processes‬

‭ has provided significant advantages. ‬By integrating these strategies, we continue to enhance our API security capabilities, foster‬‭ customer education, and ensure the reliability and performance of our security solutions.‬” — Arpit Patel, Chief Customer Officer at Traceable

The simplicity and predictability of DigitalOcean’s platform gives Traceable confidence that it can grow on DigitalOcean long-term.