Since the very beginning, Cloudflare has offered two-factor authentication with Authy, and starting today we are expanding your options to keep your account safe with Google Authenticator and any Time-based One Time Password (TOTP) app of your choice.

If you want to get started right away, visit your account settings. Setting up Two-Factor with Google Authenticator or with any TOTP app is easy - just use the app to scan the barcode you see in the Cloudflare dashboard, enter the code the app returns, and you’re good to go.

Importance of Two-Factor Authentication

Often when you hear that an account was ‘hacked’, it really means that the password was stolen.

If the media stopped saying 'hacking' and instead said 'figured out their password', people would take password security more seriously. — Khalil Sehnaoui (@sehnaoui) January 5, 2017

Two-Factor authentication is sometimes thought of as something that should be used to protect important accounts, but the best practice is to always enable it when it is available. Without a second factor, any mishap involving your password can lead to a compromise. Journalist Mat Honan’s high profile compromise in 2012 is a great example of the importance of two-factor authentication. When he later wrote about the incident he said, "Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened."

What is a TOTP app?

TOTP (Time-based One Time Password) is the mechanism that Google Authenticator, Authy and other two-factor authentication apps use to generate short-lived authentication codes. We’ve written previously on the blog about how TOTP works.

We didn’t want to limit you to only using two-factor providers that we'd built integrations with, so we built an open TOTP integration in the Cloudflare dashboard, allowing you to set up two-factor with any app that implements TOTP. That means you can choose from a wide array of apps for logging into Cloudflare securely with two-factor such as Symantec, Duo Mobile and 1Password.

Get Started

If you want to enable Two-Factor Authentication with Google Authenticator or any other TOTP provider, visit your account settings here. It’s easy to set up and the best way to secure your account. We also have step by step instructions for you in our knowledge base.