E-commerce Technology: Open door policy: the risks and rewards of open APIs
Some retailers, such as Best Buy, are making it easy for others to draw data from their web sites by making publicly available the road map to such data, known as application programming interfaces, or APIs. Those open APIs enable consumers to display images and product information from Best Buy on their social network pages, or bloggers to present Best Buy information on their postings. How can online retailers benefit from open APIs? What are the risks, and how does a retailer make sure an open API doesn’t create security risks?