Password Guidelines

Need for a good Password

It is important to the security of the entire department that your password be secure. - "A system is only as secure as its least secured account". Even if you rarely use your account here it is important to the rest of the department that your account be secure from intruders. Random testing will be done and accounts with insecure passwords will be disabled.

• There has been ever increasing number of attacks on internet systems worldwide. To thwart those attacks your password needs to be secure.
• Why increase in attacks? - In most cases they are searching for your personal information to be used for identity theft purposes. Additionally, they may be looking for confident research information.
• Passwords should have at least 8 characters and contain at least three different character classes (uppercase, lowercase, digit, special character) to be sufficiently secure.

Tips for Password Security

1. Passwords must be composed of a string of characters which are entirely random to anyone except you.
2. Passwords should never be formed from names, places, or any word that appears in a dictionary or atlas in any language. Adding numbers or replacing letters with numbers within words is a good method for setting a password.
3. Don't write it down on your desktop, commit it to memory.
4. Change it every few months.
5. Do not give it out to any other person, ever.
6. Never use an unencrypted service such as telnet, ftp, unsecured pop3/imap, etc. to log in anywhere.
7. Use a different password for each account you have.
8. Use a free password manager (which will remember passwords for you).

Guidelines for choosing a secure password

• Minimum 8 characters.
• Must not contain your name or a dictionary word.
• Must contain at least 3 of the character set (Capital letters, small letters, numbers, special characters).
• Passwords cannot contain the user's account name or parts of the user's full name that exceed two consecutive characters.
• Must not be any of your past 5 passwords.