Since our inception in 2012, the security of cloud-hosted algorithmic trading strategies has been a critical factor for all our engineering and infrastructure decisions. We carefully engineer trustless and segregated environments that ensure our user's confidential information remains secure. However, we have always sought to provide that security with more than assurances - by an independently verifiable security mechanism. Today, we're happy to share we've shipped full AES-256 encryption of project source code at rest, dramatically reducing the exposure for those users electing to use this functionality. 

This new feature works end-to-end with all layers of QuantConnect's infrastructure. Using the Local Platform, you can work on projects locally in plain text in VSCode that are encrypted before safe storage in the cloud. This improves QuantConnect Cloud compliance with major financial regulations, improving the onboarding process for financial institutions. AES256 encryption is currently the best encryption available and the method of choice for the US Government.  

This new feature encrypts your code in our database and while in transit. It arrives in your coding environment encrypted, and a locally stored passkey must be provided to produce legible strategy code. We do not store a copy of the key, so special effort is needed to ensure the code is not permanently lost. 

The code needs to be in plain text while researching, backtesting, optimizing, and live trading your strategies. This transient state is passed without storage to the services requested and destroyed on completion. Your backtests carry a code snapshot, but they are also stored encrypted with your key and decrypted in the Algorithm Lab on your computer browser.

We've added a similar feature to the LEAN CLI, allowing you to encrypt projects locally and upload them to the cloud with a simple command-line argument.

This feature is available on all institution plans and will be considered for other tiers in the coming months. For more information, see our new documentation Project Encryption.

Best,

QuantConnect Team