Most organizations treating AI security as a model problem are defending the wrong layer. Security teams filter prompts, patch jailbreaks, and tune model behavior, which is all necessary work, while the actual attack surface sits largely unexamined underneath. That surface is the API layer: the endpoints AI systems use to retrieve data, call tools, and take action on behalf of users. This isn’t a theoretical gap. According to Wallarm’s 2026 ThreatStats Report, 36% of AI…