Faculty & Staff
Faculty and Staff passwords must be a minimum length of 15 characters in length, however ITS recommends a 20 character or longer passphrase. Passwords cannot be reused or recycled. Users must change this password every 90 days.
Students
Student passwords must be a minimum of 15 characters, and are required to be updated at least once per year.Passwords cannot be reused or recycled.
MFA Users
All MFA enrolled users must have a minimum password of 15 characters, and are required to be updated at least once per year. Passwords cannot be reused or recycled.
What is a passphrase?
Nobody likes complex passwords that are hard to remember, but good password selection is one of your best defences against hackers violating your privacy and stealing personal and College data. Fortunately, modern systems provide a means of allowing users to replace random, complex passwords with long passphrases that remove the complexity requirement, can take less time to type, are easier to remember and don't have to be changed as often. But what is a passphrase and how is it different from a password?
A passphrase is typically a sentence that contains 20 or more letters, and often includes numbers, special characters, and even spaces. An example of a passphrase is: “That time Dr. Arnn sent me candy bars.”
A passphrase does not have to be a proper sentence or grammatically correct. A passphrase should be a sentence meaningful to you so it is easy to remember, but hard for other people or computers to guess. Common passphrase examples are an obscure sentence from a book, a favorite phrase, or a personal maxim; however, you should avoid highly cited or popular phrases, such as, “Four score and seven years ago…” since hackers’ tools easily guess popular phrases.
Why is passphrase better than passwords?
Typical six to 12 character passwords are easy for hacking programs to crack (often within just minutes or hours), especially if you have used the same password for multiple accounts. On the other hand, passphrases of 20 characters or more that include punctuation, uppercase, and lowercase characters offer two benefits:
- Modern hacking programs require months or longer to crack good passphrases.
- Passphrases are usually easier for humans to remember