How does financial API current limiting protection work with risk control systems?

Financial API rate limiting protection works by controlling the number of requests a client can make to an API within a specific time window, preventing abuse, ensuring fair usage, and maintaining system stability. It is often integrated with risk control systems to detect and mitigate suspicious activities, such as excessive requests from malicious actors or automated bots.

How It Works:

1. Rate Limiting Policies: Define thresholds for requests per second, minute, or hour per user, IP, or API key. For example, a payment gateway may allow 100 transactions per minute per API key.
2. Risk Control Integration: The risk control system analyzes request patterns (e.g., sudden spikes, unusual geolocations) and dynamically adjusts rate limits. If suspicious behavior is detected (e.g., a DDoS attack), the system may throttle or block requests.
3. Enforcement Mechanisms: When limits are exceeded, the API returns HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests) or similar error codes, and the risk system may log the incident for further analysis.

Example:

A fintech platform offering stock trading APIs sets a rate limit of 50 requests per second per user. The risk control system monitors for anomalies, such as a user suddenly sending 200 requests per second. The system flags this as potential abuse, enforces stricter limits (e.g., 10 requests per second), and alerts the security team.

In Tencent Cloud, services like API Gateway provide built-in rate limiting and integrate with Cloud Security solutions (e.g., Anti-DDoS, risk intelligence) to enforce these protections dynamically.