In the previous section, we learned how to manage users and roles using the Kibana UI. However, often, we would like to carry out these operations programmatically from our applications. This is where the X-Pack security APIs come in handy. X-Pack security APIs are REST APIs that can be used for user/role management, role mapping to users, performing authentication, and checking whether the authenticated user has specified a list of privileges. These APIs perform operations on the native realm. The Kibana UI internally makes use of these APIs for user/role management. In order to execute these APIs, the user should have superuser or the latest manage_security privileges. Let's explore some of these APIs in this section.