Hydra: Plugging the Unnoticed Hole in Cybersecurity 

Removing the Cybersecurity Threat of Legacy Access Permission in Analytics, Ads, and Social Accounts – Hydra Puts Businesses in Control of Their Digital Assets

– Hydra provides a single management entry point to a brand’s external channels and an easy way to monitor legacy access to ad accounts, analytics and social channels

– Enabling businesses to see who is accessing their social media, marketing, communications, and analytics platforms, Hydra works to limit potential weak points and protect brand reputation

– Hydra also allows for the streamlined onboarding of clients for agencies and the onboarding of agencies and consultants for brands.

Cybersecurity has become one of the most important concerns for businesses, but despite the intense focus, there remains a significantly overlooked area. The growing number of SaaS platforms deployed by organisations leaves them open to espionage, sabotage and GDPR vulnerability. Hydra has been developed to address that problem.

When a business enters the online arena, it inevitably exposes itself to risk. External providers – agencies, consultants, software, and third-party applications – are granted access to the brand’s communications, marketing, and analytics platforms. And while most will work for the genuine advantage of the brand, no attention is given to when or whether that access should be rescinded. It’s not just external providers that pose a risk, employee access is also often left unchecked – leaving the door open for disgruntled employees to misuse a brand’s social media. When you don’t track who has access to your digital assets, you open the door to reputational damage, the leaking of sensitive or competitive metrics and customer data, and even the ability to spend vast budgets in paid channels.

Hydra is a platform created to provide brands, agencies and enterprises with a centralised view and full user access control for all major external social and ad platforms, including Google, Meta and LinkedIn. This not only enables access provision through a single management platform. But crucially, providing a single point of truth in one hub, affording businesses a direct overview of all users at any given time and the ability to monitor changes to permissions, enabling simple and effective auditing.

While brands may think that they are protected by Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) systems, the sophisticated nature of phishing programs and the fact that 95% of cybersecurity threats are down to human error, most businesses still have points of vulnerability in the areas that they would typically outsource. And with social media hacking increasing by 1,000% – reaching 1.4bn accounts hacked monthly in 2023, businesses can’t afford to overlook the importance of external platform security.

For agencies, Hydra not only ensures the highest security standards but carries the added advantage of streamlining the onboarding process for new clients, enabling access and accountability from the get go, with minimal effort.

Justin Thorne, co-founder of Hydra, comments: ‘While organisations protect their super user and admin accounts on internal systems as a top priority, external platforms are largely overlooked. Because they are used primarily for marketing, they are often not viewed as a security risk. But these external channels are ripe for hacking. And while they may not hold the damage potential of an organisation’s in-house systems, they still carry a significant risk.

‘Hydra enables the simple monitoring and management of a potentially complex array of external business channels. When you can see precisely who has access to what – and whether they need it – you regain control of your company’s reputation, protecting your brand against disgruntled ex-employees, commercial espionage, and others with malicious intent.’