About Policies
A policy extends the functionality of an API and enforces certain capabilities such as security. A policy can control access and traffic. For example, a policy can generally control authentication, access, allotted consumption, and service level access (SLA). You can apply policies to these types of APIs:
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An APIkit project
For example, deploy the APIkit project to Anypoint Platform using API Autodiscovery and apply a policy.
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An API running on CloudHub
Design an API on Anypoint Platform, configure a proxy for Cloudhub, and apply a policy.
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An API deployed to a private or cloud-based Mule Runtime 3.8.x or later
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An API deployed to API Gateway Runtime 2.x
API Manager provides a number of policies. You can also build custom policies. You deploy a proxy API application and apply one or more policies to control how and when a received request is forwarded to its implementation endpoint. You can set an API alert to notify you when an API request violates a policy for SLA.
By default, a policy applies to the entire API, filtering traffic requests to every resource and method.
In Mule Runtime 3.8.0 and later, you can enhance security through policies by using Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper disables an API until all online policies are applied.