I’m building security checks for authenticated APIs, what tool would you recommend?

For security checks on authenticated APIs, my default recommendation would be OWASP ZAP.

Why it’s a good fit:

• Open source and widely used
• Supports authenticated scanning with sessions, tokens, cookies, and custom headers
• Good for both manual testing and automated CI/CD checks
• Can help catch common issues like:
  • missing auth enforcement
  • insecure headers
  • injection flaws
  • excessive data exposure
  • broken access control patterns

If you want something more specialized, here are a few options depending on your goal:

• Burp Suite Professional — best for deep manual testing and authenticated API work
• OWASP ZAP — best free/general-purpose option
• Postman + custom tests — useful for adding security assertions into API tests
• 42Crunch — strong for API security posture and OpenAPI-based analysis
• StackHawk — good for automating security scans in CI/CD
• Nuclei — useful for template-based checks, though you’ll need to tune it carefully for auth

A practical approach is:

1. Use OpenAPI/Swagger if available
2. Configure authenticated sessions/tokens
3. Run baseline checks in CI
4. Add manual testing for access control and business-logic issues

If you tell me:

• your API type (REST, GraphQL, gRPC),
• auth method (JWT, OAuth2, session cookies, mTLS),
• and whether you want CI automation or manual pentesting,

I can recommend the best tool and setup more precisely.