Protect Your Cryptocurrency Against Hackers

Cryptocurrency  has taken off this year faster than almost anything I have ever seen before.  Cryptocurrency market valuation to hit $1 trillion this year. That's well over 10x in a matter of months. From my perspective, the  trend is growing into the mainstream faster than smartphones, faster  than apps, and faster than the internet itself. USD 731 million have been stolen during exchange hacks in the first half of 2018, according to blockchain security experts CipherTrace.  While the majority of these hacks have involved attacked exchanges’  infrastructures, there are also ample hackers out there targeting  individual cryptocurrency investors.  There have been countless stories of hackers going after both individuals and companies to steal in some cases up to $460+ million dollars with a single hack.

 Here are the 3 ways takeaways I got from them. If you hold  cryptocurrency you are going to want to read and understand these  things. 

 

•                                                                 Cold storage devices 

               

One  great way to protect cryptocurrency vs hackers is to put the Cryptocurrency on  cold storage and lock it up at a bank safety deposit box or another  secure location. This takes it off of exchanges and out of the cloud, so  it can't be hacked online.Cold storage basically  means a device or drive that is not connected to the internet. Cold  storage is secure because then it is almost impossible to remotely hack  it, unless it is connected to a network. You would have to physically  control the device or drive to hack or access it. 

 

•                                                           Two factor authentication 

                

If you  must keep your Cryptocurrency  on exchanges for active trading or whatever reason  then you need to understand what this is and how to use it.Bryan emphasized strongly, "If you are not using a 2 factor authentication then you are a target."What  he's describing are various systems that most of the cryptocurrency  exchanges now support that generate a random code every time you try to  access the platform. This is in addition to a regular strong password. 

•    Don't leave Cryptocurrency on the exchanges for more than is necessary for trading

      

If you aren't actively trading cryptocurrency, all of the experts recommend taking it off of the exchanges immediately.Even if your personal account is secure, as we saw with the Mt. Gox hack,  even the exchanges can be hacked. If they lose all of the Cryptocurrency that  they are holding on your behalf, and they are not insured (none of them  are) then you will likely never see it again.