Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has introduced two new initiatives aimed at enhancing client and industry security.
Firstly, the firmâs recently appointed chief security officer, Nicholas Percoco, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the exchange has launched compulsory two-factor authentication (2FA).
Kraken has had 2FA as an option for users since its launch in September 2013, but now they will be asked to enable the feature upon their next login, Percoco said, adding that the prompted options for 2FA are Google Authenticator and YubiKey currently.
Secondly, the exchange has formed Kraken Security Labs, aimed to improve the security of both its own products and the âentire cryptocurrency ecosystemâ by performing âvulnerabilityâ research on third-party products, such as hardware and software wallets.
Percoco said his vision for Kraken is to âexpand upon the strong, industry leading security foundation,â and utilize advanced security products such as threat intelligence, behavior analytics and adversarial deception techniques, and incorporate them into the exchangeâs present and future products.
The CSO further said that Kraken will keep developing with other client-facing security enhancements in the near future. The exchangeâs product management team will provide âconstant improvement into 2020 and beyondâ through its security features roadmap.
âWhile this roadmap is not made public, youâll be hearing about security enhancements and upgrades as they are released and made available to you,â Percoco said. âLike most features similar to 2FA, youâll need to enable them to take advantage of the added security, so please be sure to take action when youâre prompted to.â
Nicholas Percoco image via KrakenÂ