Good Password Practices
Passwords (passphrases) are an important aspect of information security. Hackers and identity thieves are constantly looking for ways to steal people鈥檚 usernames, passwords, and other personal information, which they can then use for their own illegal purposes or financial gain. Simple passwords may cause a security breach, resulting in the theft of your user accounts. Once compromised, your account could be used to launch attacks on other 桃瘾社区 systems, companies, or institutions around the world. If someone else could figure out your password, they could assume your electronic identity. Hackers use software programs that attempt to crack users鈥 passwords and they are pretty effective at guessing passwords that are considered weak. Thus, it is very important to create a strong password that you can remember easily, but that is very difficult for others to guess.
Student/Faculty/Staff Password Rules
- must not contain more than 3 consecutive characters of your first name, last name, or username
- must be 12 or more characters long.
- must contain at least one character from three of these four categories:
- UPPERcase characters (A, B, C, ...)
- lowercase character (a, b, c, ...)
- numbers (1, 2, 3, ...)
- special characters (! * + - / : ? _ # $)
- must not be one that you have recently used
(you cannot use one of your last 4 passwords) - cannot be changed more than once every 24 hours
Tips to Create Passwords/Passphrases: Swap characters or numbers for letters and/or create an acronym from an easy-to-remember phrase:
Example 1 鈥 Swap characters: Phrase: 鈥淪inging in the rain鈥, Password: S!ng!ng1nTh3Ra!n
Example 2 鈥 Create acronym: Phrase: 鈥淢y favorite color is blue and red鈥, Password: Mfcib!u3&R3d
Your 桃瘾社区 password gives you access to almost every I.T. resource at 桃瘾社区, including very important personal information through the 桃瘾社区 Portal, so it is very important that you keep it safe.
For more details on how to create a strong password, visit the page.