DHgate Protected APIs at the Edge

DHgate is an online wholesale platform that connects Chinese manufacturers and wholesalers with buyers around the world. Since its founding in 2004, the company has established itself as one of the renowned B2B marketplaces in China, connecting more than 77 million registered buyers from over 225 countries and regions. As it enabled its global ecommerce wholesale platform, DHgate was committed to securing sensitive and personal data while using APIs for data transfer and to connect systems. It achieved its security goals by using solutions from Akamai.

With a vision to make global trade accessible to all, DHgate harnessed APIs to transfer data and make vital connections between systems. As Mr. DongYuan Dou of DHgate explained, “In line with the large-scale adoption of cloud-native and microservice architectures, the world is seeing APIs being used everywhere.” He also underscored the challenges and potential risks associated with using APIs.

In addition to struggling to understand the number of APIs in its operating environment, the company needed to know what personal or sensitive data was being transferred via APIs. It also wanted to ensure that only authorized people were granted access to data via its APIs.

Such requirements were crucial for a company like DHgate, mandated to comply with China’s Cybersecurity Law, along with foreign regulations like GDPR and CCPA. “Due to increasingly strict laws and regulations in various countries, we must control the use of and access to our APIs. We need to guard against data leakage and theft, which can occur due to denial-of-service attacks, API design flaws, and web crawlers, to name a few,” Mr. DongYuan Dou continued. 

By complementing existing security measures with a suite of Akamai products that work seamlessly together, DHgate addressed its security concerns. On the network edge, it used Akamai API Security, Akamai App & API Protector, and Akamai Bot Manager.

In fact, Mr. DongYuan Dou highlighted the easy deployment of API Security: “API Security was simple and quick to deploy, rapidly and dramatically improving our observability.” DHgate expected it would need to deploy API Security on every application, but it was able to deploy it as a type of gateway in the company’s middle IT tier.

API Security provided visibility across the company’s entire API estate and Bot Manager effectively detected bot traffic and mitigated malicious bots at the edge. A native connector feature enabled API Security to instantly block threats using App & API Protector. “API Security enabled us to visualize which of our API assets have major security vulnerabilities and are at high risk of data breaches,” said Mr. DongYuan Dou.

Should a threat make it past that security layer, DHgate was protected with intrusion detection and prevention systems, along with a web application firewall. Furthermore, it deployed its own application gateway to perform basic security measures, such as rate limiting and authenticating API access. Mr. DongYuan Dou concluded, “Combined with our efforts, Akamai's products solved our pain points.”

Founded in 2004, DHgate has become the leading B2B cross-border ecommerce marketplace in China, boasting over 34 million live listings annually. Through their global operations and offices, including in the U.S. and U.K., DHgate reaches millions of people with trusted products and services. As of December 31, 2023, DHgate served more than 77 million registered buyers from 225 countries and regions, connecting them to over 2.6 million sellers in China and other countries. For more information, please visit DHgate.com and follow @DHgate.com.