With the advent of electronic commerce (E-Commerce) and its further off-shoot into M-Commerce, online payments are becoming a common phenomenon with the payment gateways accessed remotely and possibly wirelessly. Furthermore, with the advent of Web services and their use in mobile computing applications the API becomes an important consideration.

Already, there are organizations announcing the development of various APIs to enable software and hardware developers to write single applications that can be used to target multiple security platforms present in a range of devices such as mobile phones, portable media players, set-top boxes and home gateways.

Most of these developments are targeted specifically at securing a range of embedded and consumer products, including those running OSs such as Linux, Symbian, Microsoft Windows CE and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Technological developments such as these provide the ability to significantly improve cybersecurity of a wide range of consumer as well as mobile devices. Providing a common software framework, APIs will become an important enabler of new and higher value services.