First of all, a huge thanks & shout out to all the readers, supporters & subscribers of this blog!

The past few weeks have been a rush of Linux learning, lots of work, CompTIA studying, & practice, practice, practice. If you’ve been following, you know that Digital Assets Management Group, are proponents of education, by any means so long as the proper principles*, techniques, or standards are followed. It is also highly important the learner follow guidelines or considerations with respect to ethics. Translation? The Fintech space is going to grow rapidly in 2018. As a life learner of Macro Economics & now Blockchain, I cannot express enough how important it is to seek further knowledge of the systems & technologies we use every day.

I have encouraged readers to take advantage of Google’s Cloud Platform Trial before it ends. Amazon’s AWS has a similar feature. There are even tutorials on how to set up your own cloud mining! Even better the cloud trial comes with an Ubuntu SSH Terminal, in laymen’s terms that is a pretty good computer to have within reach. So far so good, most of the commands work from manuals making it easy to use when practicing scenarios & cross referencing my study guide.

Wait!? What does this have to do with crypto!?

EVERYTHING! As a securities trader, I learned of VPN, and then later Tor, but just assumed it was maybe overkill to use it all the time. I’d even heard of a hacking rumor that allowed thieves to switch public addresses AFTER you hit send…

Then I got hacked. I started buying the dip in November or so I thought, I really bought someone else bitcoin. The thief used an Android WPA Crack to steal my transaction without me ever even knowing. I hadn’t noticed until I checked the balance later, strangely calm I reached out to Coinbase thinking there was a hiccup in the system. Initially CB was very helpful and handled my case as a suspected hack. While that was taking place, I had the sense to get my coins off the exchange to another wallet. During the few email exchanges with the CB rep I was told nothing was wrong, that I had t/x’d the coins off the exchange immediately after purchase. As any bitcoiner would have done, I had ALREADY CHECKED Block Explorer, to my horror I could actually SEE Where CB had attempted to BLOCK ME from withdrawing my own coins.

To be the victim of cyber-crime in a fledgling industry feels terrible, having absolutely NO RECOURSE intensifies that feeling. What makes it even worse is having the sense of calm, & knowing the right thing to do is harden security measures & NOT continue the embarrassment of reaching out to exchanges who will not respond. That’s right Coinbase dropped the issue, locked me out of my original account, & the one I attempted to replace it with & will not respond to emails associated with those wallets. Could you accept that and move on?

The lesson in all this is that security should be first and foremost when using your devices. 

Try using more than one of the following whenever you are on online:

1.     Free or Paid VPN App installed & ON when using internet.

2.     Browser with built-in VPN - Chromium browsers, Opera & Firefox.

3.     Use the above combination with anonymity browser extensions.

Even the most informed & sometimes high-level administrators are Snarfed, Jacked, Cloned, Socially Engineered or otherwise Hacked. Who’d they own? 

The list includes Zuckerberg, McAffee, Sony, Delloitte, Ashley Madison, AT&T/Apple iPad & many more.

Finally, Digital Assets Management Group now includes a small but growing number of cyber security, professionals. Our journey took a much-needed loop back to where it all started, as it turns out some of our closest associates have been in IT for over a decade. After an introduction to Bitcoin, many ideas were exchanged among them the need for us to add CompTIA certification to our knowledge base. The first exam was a success, looking forward to new challenges.

What began as business classes in college, became a retail securities career, which morphed into all things crypto, has opened the door to true financial freedom, a passion for a new career, the chance to write all about it, & getting paid for doing it.

Stay tuned for updates on our Linux Lab, & upcoming collaboration with The Gentlemen of Crypto!