A recent report revealed that cyberattacks on application programming interfaces (API) have burgeoned by 3000 percent in India during the July–September quarter.

The quarterly analysis by cybersecurity firm IndusFace, dispersed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that showed the radar falling on APIs for about 85 percent, which is found out to be more common than those targeting websites, underscoring the elevated risk environment for businesses that mostly depend on API gateways.

While the same, 271 million API attacks were reported to be among the 1.2 billion attacks that were discovered.

A set of guidelines known as an API enables software programs to interface and communicate with one another.

An estimated 215 million bot incidents and 377 million DDoS occurrences were found. According to the report, bot-driven threats impacted 90 percent of websites, and DDoS attacks affected 60 percent, representing a 145 percent rise in bot activity year over year.

The report indicates that the budgetary constraints caused small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to experience a 17 5percent greater rate of DDoS attacks per site than their bigger counterparts.

The quarter saw 354 million cyberattacks against SMBs.

The survey also noted that the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector had twice as many bot attacks as the industry as a whole, with financial data becoming more and more vulnerable to fraud and theft.

On top of that, bot attacks occurred on all healthcare websites, revealing serious concerns of data theft and credential abuse.

According to the study, bot-driven attacks resulted in a 50percent greater rate of vulnerability exploitation in retail and e-commerce than DDoS attacks, suggesting a wide range of cyberthreats.

At the same time, attacks in the energy and power sector quadrupled in frequency. This was ascribed to attackers using less regulated industries to launch breaches with a ransomware aim.