Securing APIs with Approov and Cloudflare: A Comprehensive Guide

Cloudflare is a leading platform for securing APIs, websites, and web apps from malicious traffic and abuse. But while Cloudflare's WAF, Bot Management, and API Shield offer strong perimeter defenses, they don’t verify what is actually making the request and this information is essential,  especially in mobile-first environments where attackers reverse-engineer apps and script fake requests. 

That’s where Approov comes in, which is why Cloudflare now offers Approov as part of the Cloudflare Bot Management and API Shield solutions, allowing customers to take immediate control over any mobile-originating traffic to their APIs.

The Problem: Perimeter Defenses Alone Aren’t Enough

Modern API threats increasingly originate from fake or repackaged mobile apps, scripts mimicking legitimate traffic, or compromised devices. While Cloudflare can detect many of these behaviors heuristically, it can’t determine if the request is coming from a genuine, untampered mobile app running in a safe environment.

The Solution: Runtime Mobile App Attestation + Edge Enforcement

By integrating Approov with Cloudflare, you can enforce a Zero Trust API access model where:

• Each API request from your mobile app includes an Approov token.
  
  
• Cloudflare validates this token at the edge using Workers or API Shield.
  
  
• Only requests from verified apps and devices are allowed to pass through.

This ensures that scripts, bots, tampered apps, and rooted devices are all blocked — before they ever reach your infrastructure.

Integration Highlights

• Approov tokens are short-lived, cryptographically signed JWTs integrated into every backend API request.
  
  
• Use Cloudflare Workers to validate Approov tokens before forwarding requests or configure Cloudflare API Shield to enforce JWT checks directly.
  
  
• Cloudflare Bot Management can be relaxed for trusted Approov-verified traffic.

For more detail on how the integration works, take a look at this Approov Knowledge Base article.

Why Cloudflare and Approov Work Well Together

Approov verifies:

• That the app is official and unmodified
• The device is not rooted, emulated, or running under attack tools
• The API key or session token is not stolen or replayed
• All TLS communications are pinned against interception

Cloudflare enforces:

• Edge-level blocking of unverified traffic
• Rate limiting and bot mitigation
• Schema validation and mTLS (optional)

Together, they form an end-to-end trust chain: from the mobile app, through the network, to your backend API.

The Operational Advantages of Approov with Cloudflare

Your devops team will be very happy with the way that Approov provides security while maintaining customer experience, and will appreciate the comprehensive real time analytics provided by the solution. 

In addition: 

• The lightweight Approov SDK is easy to integrate with your mobile app: there are Quickstarts available for all common native and cross-platform development environments.
• The continuous analysis of each device environment performed by Approov is comprehensive and deterministic. There are no false positives to manage and granular security policies can be managed dynamically and updated immediately across all your apps, with no need to update and redeploy apps.
• Approov manages your own and third-party API keys for you, getting them out of the app code, delivering them just-in-time, and only to genuine apps running in safe environments. When third-parties change API keys your app uses, you can rotate them immediately, again without touching the apps.  
• Man-in-the-Middle attacks on the channel between the app and API are blocked: Certificates and pins can be rotated easily and immediately, again without touching the app.

Summary

Approov + Cloudflare = Bulletproof API security for mobile apps.

This integration gives you the confidence that only genuine apps on uncompromised devices can access your APIs, while Cloudflare provides powerful filtering, observability, and performance at the edge.

Want to see it in action? Contact us.