What a Cloud API Link audit actually covers

Scope of the Review

Every engagement begins with a scoping conversation. We ask which third-party APIs sit inside your payment flow, account verification process, or banking-adjacent features, and which of those are considered critical to uptime. From there, we agree on a defined list of integrations to review rather than attempting to cover everything your organization touches. A narrow, clearly bounded scope produces a more useful report than a broad, shallow one.

Access requests are kept minimal. In most cases we work from read-only exports, API logs, configuration files, and documentation rather than requiring production credentials.

Payment Gateway Integrations

For gateway and processor connections, we look at how credentials are stored and rotated, whether retry logic could cause duplicate charges under network failure, and whether version pinning is in place so an unannounced API update doesn't silently change response formats. We also check how your application handles declined transactions, partial refunds, and currency conversion edge cases where the gateway's behavior may differ from what the integration assumes.

Open Banking & Aggregation APIs

Account aggregation and open banking connectors introduce consent tokens with defined lifespans and scopes. We review whether your application respects those scopes strictly, how expired or revoked consent is handled, and whether aggregation data is cached longer than the consent technically allows. Rate limit behavior from aggregation providers is checked as well, since these APIs often throttle more aggressively than payment gateways.

Identity & KYC Connectors

Verification providers sit in a sensitive position: a failure here can either block legitimate users or let through something it shouldn't. We review fallback behavior when a primary verification provider is unreachable, how verification callback data is validated, and how long verification artifacts are retained relative to your stated data retention policy.

Webhooks & Event Delivery

Incoming webhooks are one of the most commonly under-reviewed parts of a payment integration. We check signature verification on every webhook endpoint, confirm idempotency handling so a redelivered event does not get processed twice, and review what happens when a webhook fails validation. Silent failures here can mean a payment confirmation event is dropped without anyone noticing until a customer complains.

SDK Versioning & Drift

Third-party SDKs get updated, and older versions are eventually deprecated. We compare the SDK versions currently deployed in production against the vendor's supported version list, flag any SDK past its stated end-of-life date, and note where sandbox and production environments have drifted onto different versions without anyone deciding that on purpose.

Vendor Lifecycle Risk

Vendors sunset endpoints, change ownership, or update their subprocessor lists. We review whether your team has a process for monitoring vendor changelogs and status pages, and whether contractual notice periods for material changes are being tracked anywhere at all. This section of the report often surfaces integrations that have had no owner internally for some time.

Documentation Alignment

We compare internal runbooks, architecture diagrams, and onboarding documentation against what is actually configured in production. It is common to find that a diagram reflects a design from an earlier stage of the integration, with two or three undocumented changes made since. We note these gaps so documentation can be brought back in line with reality.

How an Audit Unfolds

A typical engagement runs across four stages: scoping and access setup, a documentation and configuration review, a findings draft shared for factual review with your team, and a final report with a walkthrough call. Timelines vary depending on the number of integrations in scope, and we agree on an estimated schedule before work begins rather than after.

What You Receive

Each engagement produces a written findings report organized by integration and by severity, a short summary suitable for sharing with non-technical stakeholders, a list of specific configuration and process recommendations, and a walkthrough call to answer questions. Reports are yours to keep and share internally as needed.