Security teams deal with an increasingly fragmented toolchain, custom scanners, internal asset inventories, regional ITSMs, and homegrown analytics platforms. While Strobes offers numerous out-of-the-box integrations, there are scenarios where prebuilt connectors don’t fit.
This is where the Strobes API becomes essential. It enables security engineers to build direct, reliable integrations that connect detection, analysis, and remediation pipelines.
This guide covers how the Strobes API works, what problems it solves, and the kind of outcomes it enables across various security and DevSecOps environments.
What Is the Strobes API?
The Strobes API is a set of RESTful endpoints that expose core platform functions, vulnerability ingestion, asset management, automation rules, ticketing, and reporting. It’s token-secured, permission-scoped, and designed for both interactive and system-level usage.
Core capabilities include:
- Uploading findings from any scanner or source
- Syncing and managing asset metadata
- Triggering workflows programmatically (ticketing, notifications, etc.)
- Pulling real-time vulnerability or SLA metrics
- Managing credentials and automation settings
The API serves as the foundation for extensibility, not just for custom scanners, but for connecting Strobes to how your team already operates.
Why Use the API?
Most modern security programs have requirements that don’t fit neatly into prebuilt templates. Common reasons to use the API include:
- Connecting internal vulnerability tools (e.g., custom SAST)
- Building ticket sync with tools outside Jira/ServiceNow
- Integrating with CI/CD systems to scan before merging
- Pulling weekly vulnerability trends into BI dashboards
- Automating notifications or report generation for compliance teams
Teams use the API to ensure their processes run on their terms, without waiting on roadmap support or third-party plugins.
How It Works: The Flow of a Custom Integration
Here’s what an end-to-end integration using the Strobes API typically involves:
1. Authentication and Access Control
Strobes issues scoped API tokens that govern access. These tokens are generated via the UI and passed in the header of each request.
Example:
Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIs…
Token scopes can be limited to ingestion, ticketing, reporting, etc. It’s recommended to create separate tokens for staging, testing, and production environments.
2. Ingesting Findings
Security teams often need to import findings from sources that don’t have native connectors, internal tools, third-party scanners, or proprietary analytics engines.
Using the /api/v1/findings endpoint, you can post structured JSON payloads with:
- Scanner name
- Asset identifier
- CVE/QID/CWE
- Severity
- Detection timestamps
- Remediation notes
Example payload:
{
“scanner_name”: “internal_binary_scanner”,
“project_id”: “infra-prod”,
“findings”: [
{
“title”: “Buffer Overflow in auth_service”,
“severity”: “critical”,
“description”: “Exploitable input overflow in login module”,
“asset_identifier”: “svc-auth-prod”,
“file”: “/opt/auth_service/auth.py”
}
]
}
Uploaded findings are automatically normalized, deduplicated, and run through the prioritization engine.
3. Asset and Metadata Mapping
You can associate findings with enriched asset data using the /assets endpoint. This includes:
- Business unit ownership
- Environment tags (prod, test, staging)
- Risk classification (regulated, critical, low sensitivity)
- Network visibility (external, internal)
This step ensures that findings are assessed with the correct context and routed to the appropriate team or SLA policy.
4. Triggering Automation
The /automations endpoint allows users to define trigger-action rules programmatically. Example use case:
“Create a ticket in Freshservice if a critical finding is detected on a customer-facing system.”
The JSON structure includes:
- Trigger: on_finding_create
- Conditions: severity = critical, asset_tag = external
- Action: create_ticket
- Output: ticket payload, assignment rules, SLA
Once defined, these rules run instantly no need for manual triage or analyst intervention.
5. Integration with Ticketing or Notification Tools
Not all teams use Jira or ServiceNow. Many rely on tools like:
- Freshservice
- ClickUp
- Monday.com
- Linear
- Notion
Using the Strobes API, findings can be exported in real time and pushed into these systems via your own middleware or webhook services.
6. Reporting and SLA Monitoring
The /findings, /assets, and /slas endpoints allow security teams to build custom dashboards. Typical uses:
- Weekly reports to department heads
- SLA compliance tracking
- High-risk asset exposure summaries
- Vulnerability recurrence trend analysis
Example query:
GET /api/v1/findings?status=open&severity=high&asset_tag=production
Export the results to CSV, or stream them into reporting tools like Power BI, Grafana, or Tableau.
Why This Matters
1. Integrations That Actually Fit Your Environment
Not every company uses the same stack. If your asset inventory lives in an internal tool or your ticketing system is custom-built, the API helps you connect the dots without friction.
2. Better Context, Fewer Errors
Uploading CSVs manually leads to errors, loss of context, and compliance gaps. Automated API-based ingestion ensures every finding carries metadata, tags, timestamps, and classification.
3. Continuous Updates, No Manual Intervention
Security findings aren’t static. Strobes supports delta updates. That means you can feed updated scan results without duplicating records. State transitions (e.g., resolved, reopened) are tracked without creating noise.
4. Fully Auditable, Fully Contained
Every action, whether ingesting, closing, or assigning, is logged. This is crucial for regulated environments where change tracking is required.
Real-World Example
A fintech company used the Strobes API to connect its homegrown SAST tool to Strobes. They:
- Ingested over 60,000 findings/month
- Auto-tagged findings by repo and business unit
- Synced critical findings to Linear for product teams
- Achieved SLA compliance of 92% on critical findings
They didn’t replace their toolchain. They connected it.
Who Should Use the API?
This approach works best for:
- Enterprises with internal tooling that must be retained
- MSSPs handling multiple client environments
- DevOps teams that want security automation integrated into CI/CD
- GRC teams requiring data export for audits
Final Thoughts
Strobes API isn’t just a feature. It’s an architecture choice. It gives your team full control over how vulnerability data flows ingested, analyzed, and resolved.
If your tools aren’t talking to each other or if you’re spending hours maintaining brittle scripts, it’s time to switch to a structured, secure integration layer.
Start building your integration
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