In late 2024, a large-scale phishing operation affecting over 200,000 YouTube content creators was uncovered. The scheme relied on malicious files hosted on platforms like OneDrive, typically disguised as partnership agreements or promotional materials. 

These password-protected archives contained executables that, when opened, deployed malware designed to steal login credentials and session cookies or enable remote system access. Such operations represent the dark reality of security vulnerabilities plaguing the creator economy—vulnerabilities that most platforms themselves aren’t addressing.

“When you own a valuable digital asset, it deserves the same level of protection as a physical one—like real estate,” explains Naveh Ben Dror, co-founder and CEO of Spikerz, a social media security company. “There’s no difference between your social media presence and a brick-and-mortar store: when it’s valuable, you secure it with the digital equivalent of locks, CCTV, and even a guard to ensure no one can damage what you’ve built.”

This straightforward analogy captures the philosophy behind Spikerz. Founded in early 2022, the Tel Aviv-based startup focuses on protecting creators and brands whose businesses depend on their social media presence.

Spikerz serves talent of all sizes—those who generate brand collaborations or actual revenue—up through major creators with millions of followers and their own consumer products. Their clientele also includes brands, media organizations, retail businesses, B2C software companies like gaming, and crypto firms.

Spikerz founding team (left to right): Ron Storfer, Naveh Ben Dror, and Ron Azogui

A Three-Tier Security Framework

Spikerz has developed a thorough security approach that addresses vulnerabilities at three key levels:

1. Advanced Hacking Prevention

The foundation of Spikerz’s security framework begins with preventing unauthorized access:

• Anti-phishing protection: “We’re constantly checking direct messages, comments, and any kind of interactions to make sure no malicious attacks are coming from there, trying to steal away your credentials and log into your account,” Naveh explains.
  
• Security infrastructure: Most social platforms rely entirely on the creator’s mobile device, phone number, and two-factor authentication. “If something happens to his email, phone number, or device, he’s doomed,” Naveh notes, adding that Spikerz provides cloud-based infrastructure that is not dependent on physical devices.
  
• Login monitoring: The system detects suspicious login attempts in real-time. “If it’s somebody we don’t know—for example, a login from a country you’ve never been in, with a device you’ve never seen, with an IP you’ve never seen—then we are able to auto-rotate the password and throw him out,” Naveh says.

2. Permission Management

For accounts with multiple team members, Spikerz provides:

• Access visibility: The system tracks who has access to what accounts and what level of access they maintain.
  
• Team transition management: “What happens if they leave the company or the team? What happens when somebody new logs in and has access?” These transitions represent important vulnerability points that Spikerz manages.
  
• Team member security: “Making sure that everybody that has access is secure themselves,” Naveh emphasizes. “If you as somebody have access to the creator’s account through your private account and you get hacked, those hackers get to the creator’s account.”

3. Community Integrity Protection

Beyond account access, Spikerz protects the creator’s digital community:

• Content moderation (hate speech, spam, and fraud): This includes filtering out malicious comments and preventing competitors from trying to “steal away your viewers to go to their page.”
  
• Impersonation detection: The system identifies accounts stealing a creator’s name, logo, or identity.
  
• Bot and fake account monitoring: Spikerz detects fake engagement that undermines community trust.

How Creators Experience the Platform

Implementing Spikerz requires minimal technical expertise. “We are using the platform’s official API connections. We don’t need any credentials like username or passwords,” Naveh explains. Connecting an account takes just “three clicks.”

Once connected, Spikerz performs an initial security scan to identify existing vulnerabilities. “We scan the account, find risks in the account, whether it’s malicious content, bots, fakes, comments, whatever,” Naveh describes. The platform then flags potential issues and offers remediation options.

Creators can choose their preferred level of automation. “If we flag a comment, we give you the option to take it down. Do you want to switch this to automatic? We can do this for you,” Naveh explains. 

The system can also be configured for specific concerns: “You want to filter specific topics? Let’s say you’re afraid of somebody selling tickets in your comments. Great, we can filter just selling of tickets in your comment section or anything else you want to filter for.”

When security issues arise, users receive notifications to review alerts within the platform, maintaining continuous protection of their digital assets.

The $7 Million Acceleration Plan

Spikerz recently secured $7 million in funding led by Disruptive AI, a development that will fuel the company’s growth strategy. 

The decision to seek funding was straightforward: “We wanted to move a lot faster,” Naveh explains. “We knew that if we were to raise money, we could reach our goal with much more ammunition in the magazine. You can do many more things, try more, and be quicker.”

The capital will be allocated across three key areas:

1. Research and Development: “Most of it goes to R&D to increase our accuracy, be quicker, be real-time, make sure the accounts are safe all the time, meaning uptime will be 100%,” Naveh details.
   
2. Marketing: Funding will support efforts to “attract new customers, build the brand positioning and increase visibility.”
   
3. Customer Support: The final portion is dedicated to ensuring “accounts have somebody to communicate with and have more support in the process.”

While already serving clients globally, Spikerz is focusing expansion efforts primarily on “North America and Europe,” with additional attention to Latin America, Australia, and the UK.

The Changing Security Environment

According to Naveh, the threat situation for creators continues to shift, particularly with the rise of generative AI technologies. 

“Generative AI basically introduced new types of attacks into the digital ecosystem,” he explains. “It’s a lot easier to generate automated attacks in a different scale from what we’ve seen before. It is exponentially bigger, cheaper, a lot more personalized.”

Naveh identifies several emerging threats creators should be particularly concerned about:

• Sophisticated phishing: Attacks designed to steal credentials without overtly hacking accounts
• Team vulnerabilities: Security breaches through team members with account access
• Community trust threats: Scammers targeting a creator’s audience through fake accounts

The impersonation problem, Naveh notes, is particularly damaging to creator-audience relationships. 

Platform Limitations and Creator Responsibility

When it comes to the role social platforms should play in creator security, Naveh is direct: “The platforms are providing the necessary basics for consumers—two-factor authentication, for example. It’s good, but if it’s your asset, it’s your responsibility to ensure you’re safe, and two-factor authentication is not enough anymore.”

He uses a home security analogy to illustrate this divide: “You’re in your house. Do you think that the police will patrol your house all the time? No. You’ll call them when something is up, when somebody has already broken in. You are paying for an alarm system or CCTV, right? So why should you not do the same on social media?”

This perspective shows the importance of having dedicated security solutions like Spikerz in the creator economy beyond what the platforms offer. As Naveh puts it, ” You don’t go to the person who built your house and say ‘Give me an alarm or pay for my alarm system.’ It’s yours; it’s your asset. Protect it.”

Security in an AI-Driven Future

Naveh sees both promise and peril in how AI will shape creator security. “Gen-AI is a fertile ground for malicious actors,” he observes, particularly regarding how AI can be weaponized. “You can use AI now to do scary things. When you see deepfakes in their current level, and you understand what we will see in a year, you understand the world is going to very bad things in this sense.”

This technological development is creating a race between security providers and malicious actors. “There are bad people who are using AI for destructive purposes, and there are good people who are using AI to make the world a better place,” Naveh predicts.

For creators, this means security will become increasingly essential and more complex. “So we need something to help us mitigate the things that we cannot do ourselves manually, like detecting risks we, as human beings, are just not able to do anymore,” Naveh notes.

Therefore, his advice for creators is straightforward: “If you have a valuable social media account, it’s worth protecting.”

With their recent funding secured, Spikerz’s immediate goal is clear: “Grow,” says Naveh. “Attract more people who deserve control and improved security for their accounts, and provide this to brands who want to ensure their brand, revenue, and growth are safe on socials.”