Modern software design increasingly depends on distributed systems architecture, making robust and secure APIs essential, and GraphQL is no exception. This text discusses the use of Kong Gateway to protect and manage GraphQL endpoints, highlighting its capabilities as an API gateway that provides traffic controls, security measures, monitoring, and performance enhancements like caching and rate limiting. The Kong GraphQL Proxy Caching Advanced plugin optimizes performance by caching responses based on unique GraphQL queries, while the GraphQL Rate Limiting Advanced plugin protects resources by calculating request costs based on query complexity. Using APIOps methodologies with Kong's decK tooling and GitHub actions, KongAir deploys these plugins to automate API management and ensure reliable system performance. Kong Konnect enhances this process by offering a comprehensive API management platform with visual displays and analytics for better observability and configuration oversight.