Corporate Clarity #005-09-08-001

• September 8, 2005
• James Skemp
• article

To: All Staff
From: Institutional Technology and Services (ITS)

It has come to our attention that a number of staff members are using so-called ‘insecure’ passwords.

A ‘secure’ password is typically defined as a password with a combination of numbers, letters, and special characters, like spaces ( ), periods (.), and punctuation marks (like ‘!’ and ‘?’). An ‘insecure’ password, on the other hand, is typically defined as an easily guessed word, like ‘password’, ‘me’, ‘help’, various other four letter words, and the ever popular ‘god’.

In order to combat this security risk, better educate our staff, and generally make things easier for the Institutional Technology and Services department, as of this coming Monday - December 28th - we’ll be implementing a new set of corporate password policies.

On Monday, please log in with your normal user name. Your password will have been changed to “Let’s work, Name!”, where ‘Name’ is your first name. We’ve included two user name and password combinations below as examples.

User name: AlPreston
Password: Let’s work, Albert!

User name: JoDulo
Password: Let’s work, Joni!

Please note that you are not to enter the double quotes when you enter your password - your password should begin with an ‘L’ and will end with an ‘!’.

Also, in order to prevent users from changing to an ‘insecure’ password, we’ll be disabling any password changes for the next three months.

Your friendly ITS System Administrators,

Albert Preston and Joni Dulo