Can 2FA Make Cryptocurrency Exchanges Safer?

Security for cryptocurrency exchanges has become the number one concern for investors and traders on any platform. people want to know whether their money is in safe hands, or is it possible that their assets can be stolen.

Recently, the United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has announced a mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA), for all the users of the exchanges. Now while this move is commendable, it does warrant the question: Is 2FA going to make crypto exchanges safer?

In the past we have seen that cryptocurrency exchanges can be breached by hackers from the outside. That has resulted in loss of millions worth of digital assets.

It is true that 2FA does add an extra layer of security to any account that it is attached to. It requires the user, to enter a one time password (OTP) received via SMS, once they have typed in their login details. A blog post by Kraken states that this feature of 2FA has been made available to their users since the exchange’s launch back in 2013.

Security features have been taken into serious consideration by the exchange, and also other exchanges, in light of the news of security breaches in popular crypto platforms. Kraken is using YubiKey and Google Authenticator, for the 2FA process. YubiKey is a hardware device which is responsible for generating OTPs, while Google Authenticator is a smartphone app which does the same.

With the number of hacks and breaches rising at a massive rate around the world, many exchanges are taking their security more seriously than ever before. Kraken is also building the Kraken Security Labs, which is a team dedicated to improving the security of the company’s products and environments.

Kraken’s cybersecurity team is working overtime to figure out any flaws that might still exist in the system. Security has become the primary concern for most of these exchanges and 2FA does sound like a tool to ensure safer accounts for users.