Airlock Secure Access Hub for Applications and APIs

Digital transformation—accelerated by cloud adoption, mobile work, generative AI, and post-pandemic remote work—has increased exposure to data leaks, unauthorized access, and application/API attacks. Large breaches can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while even smaller incidents now trigger strict compliance penalties and reputational damage. To cope, organizations have moved beyond perimeter-based security toward many specialized tools across network, data, application, API, identity, and analytics domains—often duplicated across on-premises and cloud stacks, which amplifies complexity.

Two responses are gaining momentum: consolidating disparate tools into integrated cybersecurity platforms, and adopting Zero Trust architectures that apply consistent principles (“never trust, always verify”) across all environments. Zero Trust reduces legacy technical debt by replacing implicit internal trust with continuous validation of users and devices, relying on tight integration between identity management and network security to enforce fine-grained, dynamic access policies for everything from legacy apps to cloud-native services.

Ergon Informatik’s Airlock Secure Access Hub unifies identity and access management (Airlock IAM) with web application and API protection (Airlock Gateway and Kubernetes-focused Microgateway). Airlock IAM acts as a policy decision point while gateways enforce policies, enabling incremental modernization from a single access point to distributed microservices while retaining centralized control. The architecture is cloud-agnostic, available via major cloud marketplaces, and designed to support true multi-cloud without vendor lock-in. It adds DDoS protection, bot mitigation, and robust API protection (including OWASP API Top 10, OpenAPI and GraphQL validation, and patented Dynamic Value Endorsement). Operationally, it supports Infrastructure-as-Code automation, includes Elasticsearch/Kibana analytics, and can export telemetry via CEF. Strengths include integrated Zero Trust alignment, SaaS availability, anomaly detection via machine learning, and privacy-enhancing cookie protection; challenges center on limited API management features and a smaller global ecosystem.

• High-profile data breaches exposing millions of records can cost up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Organizations have shifted over the last decade from perimeter-based security toward using multiple specialized security tools.
• Ergon Informatik is based in Zürich, Switzerland, was established in 1984, and employs over 400 people.
• Airlock IAM and Airlock Gateway are complemented by an Airlock Microgateway designed for Kubernetes environments.
• Airlock Secure Access Hub uses an open communications protocol between gateways and Airlock IAM to operate as an integrated platform.
• In the platform’s Zero Trust-style design, Airlock IAM functions as the policy decision point and gateways act as policy enforcement points.
• The solution is available in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud marketplaces.
• The product includes a built-in Elasticsearch instance with Kibana dashboards for reporting and analytics.
• Telemetry data can be exported to tools or cloud services that support Common Event Format (CEF).
• Ergon participates in a bug bounty program to validate and improve product security.

• “Protecting sensitive data from leaks, preventing unauthorized access to corporate resources, and securing applications and APIs from cyberattacks are now major tasks every organization must face.”
• “On the one hand, replacing numerous disparate tools with an integrated solution from a single supplier is gaining traction.”
• “By applying a set of simple and universal principles (‘never trust, always verify!’) universally and consistently across all existing environments, on-premises and in the cloud, it becomes possible to dramatically decrease the complexity and technical debt of legacy security tools.”
• “Zero Trust models enable businesses to enforce security policies dynamically, eliminating the traditional implicit trust granted to users and systems within an organization's perimeter.”
• “The continuous validation of the security posture of all devices and users to support fine-grained access decisions depends heavily on a seamless integration of identity management and network security technologies.”
• “This approach allows customers to deploy the solution for a quick and non-disruptive modernization of a legacy access management architecture and then develop it further at their pace.”
• “Airlock’s architecture is not tied to a specific cloud service provider’s proprietary technology.”
• “This means that clients only need to authenticate once, and the platform takes care of the rest, transparently propagating the session across multiple backend services, even those that cannot natively support federated authentication standards.”
• “In addition to traditional web application firewall functions, Airlock offers an interesting data leak protection capability, which prevents remote devices from accessing cookies from backend apps.”
• “Dynamic Value Endorsement…enables dynamic whitelisting of permitted variables within API interactions.”