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Safe Computing - Passwords

You appear to have one username and password at Macalester, but it's actually several. Moodle, Novell, e-mail and all the other services all have individual accounts for you. We use LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to synchronize your multiple accounts and passwords.

Passwords at Macalester are always case-sensitive (i.e. "Monkey" is different from "monkey").

Password expiration

Even though it isn't popular, we will begin expiring passwords in the near future. This is a precautionary measure to ensure that if someone discovers your password, it will eventually become useless. At the beginning of each semester your password will expire and you will need to create a new one. You won't be able to use an earlier password, or one deemed insecure.

Good passwords

A good password is one that is both hard to guess and hard to crack. (That is, it must be long enough and complex enough that a computer program designed to guess passwords cannot discover it in a reasonable amount of time.) Our system requires your password to meet certain critera:

• Your surname or username may not be a part of your password.
• Must be 6 or more characters long (preferably 8 or more).
• Must contain at least one number.
• Can contain no more than 15 characters

Better passwords will have multiple numbers, mixed upper and lower case letters, include punctuation (such as the hyphen or period) and are longer. The best password is a completely random series of characters.

Even if your password is excellent, it is totally useless as a security precaution if you write it on a post-it note and stick it on your monitor. If you must write it down, put it in your wallet or purse, or hide it somewhere safe (and not under the keyboard or in your top desk drawer).

Macalester College · 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105  USA · 651-696-6000
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