Catapult Hydra is Hotspot Shield’s proprietary VPN protocol, created as an alternative to OpenVPN and IPSec to reduce latency and improve speed. It offers faster connections, lower traffic overhead, and up to 2.4× better performance over long distances. Built on TLS 1.2 with RSA-2048 and ECDHE key exchange, supporting AES-128/256. The protocol is closed-source, but its security has been verified by external audits.