Cybersecurity for your Cryptocurrency Investment

Cryptocurrency has burst out from relative obscurity in its early years to the front page of finance news. No press release doesn’t cover the world of digital currencies due to its increased importance. Several websites try to teach investors about the best platform to buy cryptocurrency in France for enthusiasts attracted by the crypto boom. During the early 2010s, there were a handful of virtual currencies available.

Today, there are close to 20,000 cryptos and more than 500 exchanges on which these coins and tokens are traded. However, the spotlight that has been shone on the crypto space has brought about attention from malicious entities. These agents, typically known as hackers, try to get their hands on your crypto login details to steal your wealth.

Numerous phishing and identity theft attacks are occurring in the digital currency space. Hence, it is key for you to understand the most common cyber threats against crypto wallets.

 

Why is Cybersecurity for Digital Currency Crucial?

Since the crypto space started experiencing a big buzz, there have been several cyber-attacks by cybercriminals. The most prolific include cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets. In 2019, CipherTrace, a blockchain security company, revealed that the worth of cryptocurrency crimes reached $4.3 billion.

Right from the first Mt. Gox exchange hack, there have been constant attacks on tens of crypto exchanges. Even Binance, the world’s most dominant crypto exchange, was attacked in 2019. The hackers made away with $40 million worth of digital currency. More than $125 million in crypto was stolen in 2019.

These attacks are usually centered on crypto exchanges. Nevertheless, sometimes they focus on individual crypto investors. How would you feel if you lost all your coins at a go, not to a trading miscalculation but to an online thief? You’d lay all of the blame on the cyber-attacker. Still, the truth is you’ll eventually realize you could have protected your coins and tokens better.

 

Methods to Better Protect your Crypto Investment

Here are some methods to better protect your coins:

Move your Coins to a Cold Wallet

A cold wallet does not get connected to the internet. On the other hand, a hot wallet is always linked to the web, making it more susceptible to internet threats. Cold wallets or hardware wallets remain one of the most popular safe storage choices for crypto investors because of their level of encryption.

Crypto exchanges get hacked a lot because they use hot wallets since users might want to perform transactions. In 2019, BITpoint, a crypto exchange based in Japan, experienced a hack attack on its hot wallets. Its cold wallets were safe from the breach.

Make Sure your Internet Access is Protected

When you’re browsing the internet, your activity can be seen depending on the network you’re connected to. This includes details like the website you visited, the pages you clicked on, and even your login credentials.

One of the popular ways internet activity can get spied on is through public Wi-Fi networks. Hackers can easily perform a man-in-the-middle attack to spy on the data of all the users connected to the free Wi-Fi.

You don’t need to avoid Wi-Fi because of this form of security lapse. With a great VPN, you can encrypt the information passing through your device. Even if a hacker attempts to spy on your internet activity, the VPN’s encryption will make it unreadable, thus protecting your internet activity while accessing your cryptocurrency wallet.

Protect all your Devices

All it takes for your entire crypto finances to get stolen is one piece of malware. There is malware that can change the destination address of a crypto transaction to that of the hacker. The bad thing about crypto is that transactions can’t get reversed, making your coins effectively lost forever.

It would help if you protected the devices you use to access your crypto wallet. You have to get a firewall and an antivirus program.

Check out for Suspicious Activity on your PC

Sometimes, malware can sneak past the best antiviruses and firewalls. That’s why you need to take an occasional look at the operations your PC is performing.

When you use your PC, you’d be able to spot the programs that come up in your Task Manager in the ‘Processes’ section. If you see any strange processes, it might mean your device has gotten infected with malware. One of the ways to determine this is if your PC gets hot on starting up or becomes slower.

 

Conclusion

The digital currency space has been mostly followed since its initial unpopularity when Bitcoin was launched. However, with the attention placed on crypto, many increasing bad actors have been trying to steal crypto funds.

To protect yourself, you need to secure your devices, transfer your funds to a cold wallet, lookout for suspicious activity, and make sure your internet activity isn’t being spied on.