The document discusses user account management tasks for system administrators, including creating login names, assigning home directories and user IDs, setting passwords and shells, and formatting the password file. It describes challenges around reusable passwords and methods to improve security such as password aging, lockouts for failed attempts, and one-time password tokens.
The document discusses user account management tasks for system administrators, including creating login names, assigning home directories and user IDs, setting passwords and password policies, and tools for managing user accounts. It covers challenges around reusable passwords and approaches to improve security such as password aging, lockouts for failed attempts, and one-time password tokens.
A common concern across organizations is that users have too many passwords to man-age, each with a separate management interface to become familiar with. This creates user frustration and increased costs around Help Desk and IT support. Enterprise single sign-on (SSO) is looked at as a solution but for many organizations it proves too costly and many encounter internal resistance due to security concerns.
Password synchronization is a possible midpoint that can ease user frustrations by ena-bling access to different systems using the same password and a single interface. This proves easier to implement than SSO and most solutions can force enrollment and do not require client-side software.
However, organizations have struggled with forgotten passwords as a sticking point with password synchronization as each system must be reset independently.
PortalGuard addresses these challenges by providing a cost-effective, flexible approach to server-based password synchronization plus self-service password reset allowing users to easily manage passwords for multiple systems from a single, consistent interface.
http://www.portalguard.com
The document discusses the limitations of using only the standard Windows password policy and introduces nFront Password Filter as a solution. It summarizes the Windows password policy options and their problems, such as allowing weak passwords. It then describes nFront Password Filter's features like allowing multiple granular policies, improved user experience with password requirements, and tools that enhance security like dictionary checks. The document positions nFront Password Filter as a way to enforce stronger password policies and meet compliance needs like PCI.
Summarizes the problems users experience when managing too many passwords. It describes the various approaches available to organizations to reduce the password burden on users and to improve the security of their authentication systems.
Configurable Password Management: Balancing Usability and CompliancePortalGuard
This document provides an overview of the configurable password management features of PortalGuard software. It describes how PortalGuard allows organizations to define password policies that can be applied to individual users, groups, or domains to enforce strong passwords. Policies control properties such as password length, complexity, expiration, and history. The document outlines how PortalGuard checks passwords against policies, provides self-service password reset, and balances security and usability.
The document discusses password security, explaining authentication and authorization, how passwords are used to control access, the importance of strong password selection to prevent cracking, and provides guidelines for password policies and creating strong passwords to protect against attacks. It examines common authentication methods, why passwords should be complex and regularly changed, and tools that can crack passwords if they are weak.
The document discusses user account management tasks for system administrators, including creating login names, assigning home directories and user IDs, setting passwords and shells, and formatting the password file. It describes challenges around reusable passwords and methods to improve security such as password aging, lockouts for failed attempts, and one-time password tokens.
The document discusses user account management tasks for system administrators, including creating login names, assigning home directories and user IDs, setting passwords and password policies, and tools for managing user accounts. It covers challenges around reusable passwords and approaches to improve security such as password aging, lockouts for failed attempts, and one-time password tokens.
A common concern across organizations is that users have too many passwords to man-age, each with a separate management interface to become familiar with. This creates user frustration and increased costs around Help Desk and IT support. Enterprise single sign-on (SSO) is looked at as a solution but for many organizations it proves too costly and many encounter internal resistance due to security concerns.
Password synchronization is a possible midpoint that can ease user frustrations by ena-bling access to different systems using the same password and a single interface. This proves easier to implement than SSO and most solutions can force enrollment and do not require client-side software.
However, organizations have struggled with forgotten passwords as a sticking point with password synchronization as each system must be reset independently.
PortalGuard addresses these challenges by providing a cost-effective, flexible approach to server-based password synchronization plus self-service password reset allowing users to easily manage passwords for multiple systems from a single, consistent interface.
http://www.portalguard.com
The document discusses the limitations of using only the standard Windows password policy and introduces nFront Password Filter as a solution. It summarizes the Windows password policy options and their problems, such as allowing weak passwords. It then describes nFront Password Filter's features like allowing multiple granular policies, improved user experience with password requirements, and tools that enhance security like dictionary checks. The document positions nFront Password Filter as a way to enforce stronger password policies and meet compliance needs like PCI.
Summarizes the problems users experience when managing too many passwords. It describes the various approaches available to organizations to reduce the password burden on users and to improve the security of their authentication systems.
Configurable Password Management: Balancing Usability and CompliancePortalGuard
This document provides an overview of the configurable password management features of PortalGuard software. It describes how PortalGuard allows organizations to define password policies that can be applied to individual users, groups, or domains to enforce strong passwords. Policies control properties such as password length, complexity, expiration, and history. The document outlines how PortalGuard checks passwords against policies, provides self-service password reset, and balances security and usability.
The document discusses password security, explaining authentication and authorization, how passwords are used to control access, the importance of strong password selection to prevent cracking, and provides guidelines for password policies and creating strong passwords to protect against attacks. It examines common authentication methods, why passwords should be complex and regularly changed, and tools that can crack passwords if they are weak.
IS-1 Short Report [Muhammad Akram Abbasi]Akram Abbasi
This document discusses software engineering for adaptive and self-managing systems. It focuses on how self-adaptive and self-managing properties can be embedded into the requirement engineering process for requirement elicitation. The goal is to develop a system that can self-configure, self-optimize, self-heal and adapt to changing contexts automatically without needing direct human control. It proposes that such a system would help address common problems in requirement elicitation like missing, unclear or changing requirements.
PortalGuard’s Password Management will increase the security of passwords by adding features such as more granular password quality rules, history, expiration and lockout due to incorrect logins. This is especially beneficial for applications failing to meet compliance requirements, such as homegrown web applications or custom SQL user repositories. Administrators can easily manage multiple password policies while users are given usability features such as password meters and password expiration reminders synched with their email client calendar.
Watch tutorial here: http://pg.portalguard.com/configurable_password_management_tutorial
Performance Requirements: CMG'11 slides with notes (pdf)Alexander Podelko
Performance requirements should be tracked throughout a system's entire lifecycle, from inception through design, development, testing, operations, and maintenance. However, different groups involved at each stage use their own terminology and metrics, making performance requirements confusing. The document aims to provide a holistic view of performance requirements by discussing key metrics like throughput, response time, and concurrency used across the lifecycle. It also addresses issues like ensuring requirements are defined consistently regardless of changing workloads or system optimizations.
This document summarizes key concepts around access control techniques including identity management, password management, account management, profile management, directory management, and single sign-on. It discusses decentralized access control, the goals of identity management including consolidating user IDs, bindings users to policies and privileges. It also covers technical aspects of password management, account locking, and challenges of full deployment of account management systems.
This document provides an overview of Oracle Row Level Security. It discusses how row level security allows data from different departments or companies to be stored in a single database while restricting access to specific rows. It implements security policies through stored functions that add predicates to queries to filter rows. This provides advantages over previous methods like views and triggers that had maintenance and security issues. The document provides a brief example to illustrate how row level security works and the basic steps to set it up.
Discussion Post an article review (minimum of 200 words) relatLyndonPelletier761
This document contains several sections related to IT security policies, including a sample password protection policy template and guidelines for writing policies. It discusses key elements of policies such as the overview, purpose, scope, definitions, compliance, and revision history. It also includes sample sections for a password protection policy, including password creation, change, and protection guidelines. Finally, it provides related resources and links for security policies.
I. Passwords are an important security measure that require complexity to prevent unauthorized access. Standards recommend passwords be at least 8 characters including 3 of 4 character types and not based on dictionary words.
II. Passwords should be complex, unique, and not related to the user. Common substitutions like 0 for o don't strengthen passwords.
III. Passwords must be kept secret, changed if compromised, and different for different accounts and levels of access. Secure transmission is also important.
Graphical Password Authentication using Image SegmentationIRJET Journal
1) The document proposes a new graphical password authentication system using image segmentation. It aims to improve upon traditional alphanumeric passwords which are difficult for users to remember and tend to be insecure.
2) The proposed system works by having a user select a sequence of grids from a segmented image during registration. On login, the user must select the grids in the same order to authenticate. This provides clues to help remember the password but makes it difficult to guess.
3) The document discusses limitations of alphanumeric passwords and how graphical passwords could address problems of memorability and security. Prior systems like PassPoints are analyzed, and image segmentation is proposed as an improved recall-based graphical password scheme.
This document discusses various account and password policies in Active Directory, including:
- Domain level policies which are group policy settings that apply to the entire domain. The default domain controller policy sets account policies like password settings.
- Common account policies include password policies, which control password complexity, length and expiration, and account lockout policies, which lock accounts after failed login attempts.
- Specific password policies discussed include minimum password length, complexity requirements, password expiration settings, and whether passwords are stored using reversible encryption. Configuring strong settings for these policies increases security against password cracking attacks.
Identity management spans technologies including password management, user profile management, user provisioning directories, meta directories, virtual directories and single sign-on (SSO).
Two technologies that are frequently purchased and deployed together are password management and user provisioning. In such projects, one technology must normally be deployed first and act as the technical foundation for the other.
This paper discusses technical and practical considerations that impact the sequence of these two deployments, and concludes that in most cases it is best to begin with password management, and follow up with account management.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows:
• Identity management technologies:
A description of how password management and user provisioning fit into the identity management market, and what each technology does.
• Technical and business requirements:
A characterization of the technical and business requirements most organizations place on each type of technology.
• Deployment complexity:
A description of typical deployment tasks in both password management and user provisioning projects, and how business complexity impacts the time-to-ROI in each case.
• Conclusions:
A summary of why password management should, in general, precede user provisioning in an identity management project.
This document discusses system security and password management. It describes how passwords authenticate users and determine their privileges. For example, in UNIX systems the password is encrypted using DES algorithm with a salt value to prevent duplicates. The document also discusses strategies for strong password selection, such as user education, computer-generated passwords, and reactive/proactive password checking. It provides guidelines for components of a good password. Additionally, it covers operating system hardening techniques like disabling unneeded services/accounts, updating software, and removing unneeded programs/utilities. Specific steps are outlined for securing Windows and UNIX systems.
This white paper discusses the challenges of account lockout management and the benefits of an automated solution. It notes that account lockouts are necessary for security but result in help desk calls and lost productivity. Managing account lockouts manually is complex and time-consuming. The paper estimates that organizations can save $23,500-$70,500 annually by automating account lockout resolution through a product like NetWrix Account Lockout Examiner. This provides faster resolution and proactive handling of lockouts.
An Enhanced Security System for Web Authentication IJMER
Web authentication has low security in these days. Todays, For Authentication purpose,
Textual passwords are commonly used; however, users do not follow their requirements. Users tend to
choose meaningful words from dictionaries, which make textual passwords easy tobreak and vulnerable
to dictionary or brute force attacks. Also, Textual passwords can be identified by 3rd
party software’s.
Many available graphicalpasswords have a password space that is less than or equal to the textual
passwordspace. Smart cards or tokens can be stolen.There are so many biometric authentications have
been proposed; however, users tend to resistusing biometrics because of their intrusiveness and the effect
on their privacy. Moreover,biometrics cannot be evoked.In this paper, we present and evaluate our
contribution,i.e., the OTP and 3-D password. A one-time password (OTP) is a password that isvalid for
only one login session or transaction. OTPs avoid a number of shortcomingsthat are associated with
traditional (static) passwords. The most important shortcoming that is addressed by OTPs is that, in
contrast to static passwords, they are not vulnerable to replay attacks. It means that a potential intruder
who manages to record an OTPthat was already used to log into a service or to conduct a transaction
will not be able toabuse it, since it will be no longer valid. The 3-D password is a multifactor
authenticationscheme. To be authenticated, we present a 3-D virtual environment where the
usernavigates and interacts with various objects. The sequence of actions and interactionstoward the
objects inside the 3-D environment constructs the user’s 3-D password.
Self Service Reset Password Management Survey ReportTools 4 Ever
The results of a survey focused on the issue of allowing end users reset their own passwords, and if and how this could benefit the help desk . Self-service reset password software allows end users to easily reset their own passwords.
The correct statements are:
a. Every user must be assigned to a role or their data will not display in opportunity reports, forecast roll-ups, and other
displays based onroles
c. When an account owner is not assigned a role, the sharing access for related contacts is read/write, provided
the organization-wide default for contacts is not controlled by parent.
The document discusses testing a prototype for an online dictionary website. It describes the goal of allowing users to create accounts, save words to personal lexicons, and tag words. It then provides sample test questions to evaluate usability, such as how a user would log in, look up a word they previously saved, and save/tag a new word. Next, it lists heuristics for user interface design, such as maintaining visibility of system status, using natural language, allowing user control and undo/redo, consistency, and preventing errors.
Startup Institute NY (Summer 2016) - Authentication, Validation, and Basic Te...Matthew Gerrior
This document provides an agenda for a curriculum on authentication, validation, and basic testing. It includes introductions and background on the presenter and their company Devpost. The topics covered are authentication using cookies and sessions, model validations in Rails, the Devise authentication gem, and testing with RSpec, integration testing, acceptance testing with Cucumber, and resources for further learning. Testing methodologies like TDD, unit testing, integration testing, and acceptance testing are explained.
The document proposes a cost reduction plan for an AWS environment with current annual spend of $490k. It identifies five key areas for cost savings: 1) Implementing autoscaling for environments to better match usage and reduce overprovisioning, estimated at $96k in savings. 2) Managing development/production instances to turn off non-peak periods, estimated $84k savings. 3) Using spot instances for machine learning training for $48k savings. 4) Switching model builds to serverless technologies for $6k savings. 5) Controlling S3 storage and implementing data lifecycles for $18k savings. The plan estimates a total of $252k in annual savings, over 50% reduction in AWS
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IS-1 Short Report [Muhammad Akram Abbasi]Akram Abbasi
This document discusses software engineering for adaptive and self-managing systems. It focuses on how self-adaptive and self-managing properties can be embedded into the requirement engineering process for requirement elicitation. The goal is to develop a system that can self-configure, self-optimize, self-heal and adapt to changing contexts automatically without needing direct human control. It proposes that such a system would help address common problems in requirement elicitation like missing, unclear or changing requirements.
PortalGuard’s Password Management will increase the security of passwords by adding features such as more granular password quality rules, history, expiration and lockout due to incorrect logins. This is especially beneficial for applications failing to meet compliance requirements, such as homegrown web applications or custom SQL user repositories. Administrators can easily manage multiple password policies while users are given usability features such as password meters and password expiration reminders synched with their email client calendar.
Watch tutorial here: http://pg.portalguard.com/configurable_password_management_tutorial
Performance Requirements: CMG'11 slides with notes (pdf)Alexander Podelko
Performance requirements should be tracked throughout a system's entire lifecycle, from inception through design, development, testing, operations, and maintenance. However, different groups involved at each stage use their own terminology and metrics, making performance requirements confusing. The document aims to provide a holistic view of performance requirements by discussing key metrics like throughput, response time, and concurrency used across the lifecycle. It also addresses issues like ensuring requirements are defined consistently regardless of changing workloads or system optimizations.
This document summarizes key concepts around access control techniques including identity management, password management, account management, profile management, directory management, and single sign-on. It discusses decentralized access control, the goals of identity management including consolidating user IDs, bindings users to policies and privileges. It also covers technical aspects of password management, account locking, and challenges of full deployment of account management systems.
This document provides an overview of Oracle Row Level Security. It discusses how row level security allows data from different departments or companies to be stored in a single database while restricting access to specific rows. It implements security policies through stored functions that add predicates to queries to filter rows. This provides advantages over previous methods like views and triggers that had maintenance and security issues. The document provides a brief example to illustrate how row level security works and the basic steps to set it up.
Discussion Post an article review (minimum of 200 words) relatLyndonPelletier761
This document contains several sections related to IT security policies, including a sample password protection policy template and guidelines for writing policies. It discusses key elements of policies such as the overview, purpose, scope, definitions, compliance, and revision history. It also includes sample sections for a password protection policy, including password creation, change, and protection guidelines. Finally, it provides related resources and links for security policies.
I. Passwords are an important security measure that require complexity to prevent unauthorized access. Standards recommend passwords be at least 8 characters including 3 of 4 character types and not based on dictionary words.
II. Passwords should be complex, unique, and not related to the user. Common substitutions like 0 for o don't strengthen passwords.
III. Passwords must be kept secret, changed if compromised, and different for different accounts and levels of access. Secure transmission is also important.
Graphical Password Authentication using Image SegmentationIRJET Journal
1) The document proposes a new graphical password authentication system using image segmentation. It aims to improve upon traditional alphanumeric passwords which are difficult for users to remember and tend to be insecure.
2) The proposed system works by having a user select a sequence of grids from a segmented image during registration. On login, the user must select the grids in the same order to authenticate. This provides clues to help remember the password but makes it difficult to guess.
3) The document discusses limitations of alphanumeric passwords and how graphical passwords could address problems of memorability and security. Prior systems like PassPoints are analyzed, and image segmentation is proposed as an improved recall-based graphical password scheme.
This document discusses various account and password policies in Active Directory, including:
- Domain level policies which are group policy settings that apply to the entire domain. The default domain controller policy sets account policies like password settings.
- Common account policies include password policies, which control password complexity, length and expiration, and account lockout policies, which lock accounts after failed login attempts.
- Specific password policies discussed include minimum password length, complexity requirements, password expiration settings, and whether passwords are stored using reversible encryption. Configuring strong settings for these policies increases security against password cracking attacks.
Identity management spans technologies including password management, user profile management, user provisioning directories, meta directories, virtual directories and single sign-on (SSO).
Two technologies that are frequently purchased and deployed together are password management and user provisioning. In such projects, one technology must normally be deployed first and act as the technical foundation for the other.
This paper discusses technical and practical considerations that impact the sequence of these two deployments, and concludes that in most cases it is best to begin with password management, and follow up with account management.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows:
• Identity management technologies:
A description of how password management and user provisioning fit into the identity management market, and what each technology does.
• Technical and business requirements:
A characterization of the technical and business requirements most organizations place on each type of technology.
• Deployment complexity:
A description of typical deployment tasks in both password management and user provisioning projects, and how business complexity impacts the time-to-ROI in each case.
• Conclusions:
A summary of why password management should, in general, precede user provisioning in an identity management project.
This document discusses system security and password management. It describes how passwords authenticate users and determine their privileges. For example, in UNIX systems the password is encrypted using DES algorithm with a salt value to prevent duplicates. The document also discusses strategies for strong password selection, such as user education, computer-generated passwords, and reactive/proactive password checking. It provides guidelines for components of a good password. Additionally, it covers operating system hardening techniques like disabling unneeded services/accounts, updating software, and removing unneeded programs/utilities. Specific steps are outlined for securing Windows and UNIX systems.
This white paper discusses the challenges of account lockout management and the benefits of an automated solution. It notes that account lockouts are necessary for security but result in help desk calls and lost productivity. Managing account lockouts manually is complex and time-consuming. The paper estimates that organizations can save $23,500-$70,500 annually by automating account lockout resolution through a product like NetWrix Account Lockout Examiner. This provides faster resolution and proactive handling of lockouts.
An Enhanced Security System for Web Authentication IJMER
Web authentication has low security in these days. Todays, For Authentication purpose,
Textual passwords are commonly used; however, users do not follow their requirements. Users tend to
choose meaningful words from dictionaries, which make textual passwords easy tobreak and vulnerable
to dictionary or brute force attacks. Also, Textual passwords can be identified by 3rd
party software’s.
Many available graphicalpasswords have a password space that is less than or equal to the textual
passwordspace. Smart cards or tokens can be stolen.There are so many biometric authentications have
been proposed; however, users tend to resistusing biometrics because of their intrusiveness and the effect
on their privacy. Moreover,biometrics cannot be evoked.In this paper, we present and evaluate our
contribution,i.e., the OTP and 3-D password. A one-time password (OTP) is a password that isvalid for
only one login session or transaction. OTPs avoid a number of shortcomingsthat are associated with
traditional (static) passwords. The most important shortcoming that is addressed by OTPs is that, in
contrast to static passwords, they are not vulnerable to replay attacks. It means that a potential intruder
who manages to record an OTPthat was already used to log into a service or to conduct a transaction
will not be able toabuse it, since it will be no longer valid. The 3-D password is a multifactor
authenticationscheme. To be authenticated, we present a 3-D virtual environment where the
usernavigates and interacts with various objects. The sequence of actions and interactionstoward the
objects inside the 3-D environment constructs the user’s 3-D password.
Self Service Reset Password Management Survey ReportTools 4 Ever
The results of a survey focused on the issue of allowing end users reset their own passwords, and if and how this could benefit the help desk . Self-service reset password software allows end users to easily reset their own passwords.
The correct statements are:
a. Every user must be assigned to a role or their data will not display in opportunity reports, forecast roll-ups, and other
displays based onroles
c. When an account owner is not assigned a role, the sharing access for related contacts is read/write, provided
the organization-wide default for contacts is not controlled by parent.
The document discusses testing a prototype for an online dictionary website. It describes the goal of allowing users to create accounts, save words to personal lexicons, and tag words. It then provides sample test questions to evaluate usability, such as how a user would log in, look up a word they previously saved, and save/tag a new word. Next, it lists heuristics for user interface design, such as maintaining visibility of system status, using natural language, allowing user control and undo/redo, consistency, and preventing errors.
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Problems with Password Change Lockout Periods in Password Policies
1. Problems with Password Change Lockout Periods in Password Policies
A common feature in many Corporate Password Policies is a “Password Change Lockout Period.”
This type of policy requires that after a user changes their password to wait for a lock out period to
expire before the user can change their password again. This type of policy originated as method
to compensate for a technical limitation for a specific type of user Directory store originally used in
the 1970s that is now outdated and should not still exist in Policies. An unfortunate by-product of
this carry over is that a Password Change Lockout Period actually reduces the strength of the
Password Policies and puts systems at risk to attacks based on Social Engineering exploits.
Password Policy Example
Here is an example of a corporate Password Policy from a previous employer:
Enter new password.
Your new password must comply with the password policy:
The password must meet the system complexity requirements:
o Not contain all or part of the user's account name
o Contain characters from three of the following four categories:
English uppercase characters (A through Z)
English lowercase characters (a through z)
Numerals (0 through 9)
Non-alphabetic characters (such as !, $, #, %)
The password must meet the password length requirements of the system. The minimum
password length: 8.
The password must meet the password history requirements of the system. The number of
passwords to store: 13.
2. The password must meet the password maximum age requirements of the system.
Maximum password age: 90.
The password must meet the password age requirements of the system. Minimum
password age: 1.
The last bullet is the Password Change Lockout Period and is the problem: "The password must
meet the password age requirements of the system. Minimum password age: 1" (1 day in this
case).
I briefly go over the background on why a Password Change Lockout Period was originally needed
and why this type of rule adds complexity to the password management process and does not
increase the security of the processes but instead actually makes a system less secure.
A little Password Policy history (as I remember it):
Directories at one time were the most commonly used (and are still extensively used) user store on
both *NIX and Windows systems. Originally, Directories only stored the current password and the
date the password was last changed. With this data, it was simple to implement a "must change
password every x days" password aging policy.
Crafty users realized that when they were forced to change their password they could simply
change it a second time immediately after the first and go back to their original password,
bypassing the password expiration policy.
Administrators realized that users (and often times the admins themselves) were doing this, and the
Password Policy arms race began.
A new multi-value field for “Password History” was added to the Directory schema along with a
global “Password History Length” value. Users were not allowed to reuse a password until the user
exceeded the number of interim password specified by the value in Password History Length.
Users then fired the next volley by changing passwords enough times in a rapid succession to
exceed the password reuse policy limit and go back to their original password. Admins fired back
by raising the Password History Length to a larger number (such as 50) to make manually cycling
through passwords to get back to the user’s favorite password difficult. Crafty users returned fire by
scripting password changes.
The Admins' solution to this end run around The Password History Length was to limit the number
of user initiated passwords changes to (what was usually) one password change per day. This
way if the password history limitation was set to 5 and the users could only change their password
once a day, the original password couldn't be reused for at least 5 days and that was often enough
of a hassle to dissuade users from changing their passwords on 5 successive days. Admins were
still allowed to change a user's password without restrictions to allow password resets if the user
forgot their new password.
LDAP based Directories, such as OpenLDAP, were often the primary data store for authentication
systems and still work this way today. (http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin24/overlays.html)
3. Although harder to implement and not seen in many Directory implementations, Password Aging
Policies that prevent users from reusing a password until a specified elapsed time period (such as
90 days) have emerged. This feature makes a password change lockout period irrelevant and
solves other inherent issues.
Consider these two rules:
The password must meet the password history requirements of the system. The number of
passwords to store: 13.
The password must meet the password maximum age requirements of the system.
Maximum password age: 90.
These two rules ensure that a password is not reused for both at least 90 days and until 13 other
passwords have been used in the interim; the 1 day aging requirement is superfluous in this case.
If the user is allowed to change their password immediately and repeatedly (for any number of
times) a prior password still cannot be reused for 90 days instead of the "work around" of Password
Reuse threshold times the Password Change Lockout Period
The Securityimplications of Password Change Lockout Periods
A frequently voiced concern for Password Change Lockout Periods is there are (allegedly) social
engineering attack exposures with allowing users to repeatedly change passwords. I do not find this
to be a supportable reason for a Password Change Lockout Period. It must be assumed that the
mechanism to change passwords is secure. Changing a password more than once a day (or any
time period) cannot be any more or less insecure than changing a password an unlimited number
of times per time period or the entire process is NOT secure. It is a problem if the user can cycle
back to a previous password, but the elapsed time reuse restriction will eliminate this concern.
I have also heard the argument that "there is no reason that users should need to change a
password more often"; this is a flawed assumption. Consider this scenario: A user changes their
password and suspects the new password was "shoulder-surfed" and wants to change their
password again to maintain their login integrity or maybe the user realize the person they just hung
up with really wasn't from IT and they probably shouldn’t have given the caller their login
credentials. That is a serious issue but a rule requiring 24 hour limits between user initiated
password changes unnecessarily lengthens the time until the password can be reset.
Supporters for a Password Change Lockout Period state that a user password can be changed
more than once a day; the limit is one user initiated password change in a 24 hour period and an
administrator can make an unlimited number of subsequent password changes. This process
leaves an account potentially exposed until an administrator can be contacted and resets the
password. This process also adds expense and delay (which weakens the overall security of the
system) without adding any benefit.
Furthermore, administrators are frequently allowed to set insecure passwords for users and often
use the same password for all clients when they reset passwords. It is even worse when there is
an actual IT policy that all resets use the same weak and documented dictionary password like
"Password1". This was the case for my previous employer that used the policy I used as an
example. If it is widely known that the company uses "Password1", "Welcome1" or any other
4. standard or documented password and the users will not be able to change their password for 24
hours, this could be a serious security issue.
A legitimate requirement is that user initiated password changes must be self-service and not
require admin assistance whenever possible provided security is not legitimately compromised.
Realistically, requiring a user to reach out to an admin to reset a password is expensive; it takes
time away from the user's productivity, it requires a human on staff to process the password change
and the fully loaded cost of the admin (benefits, floor space, computers, call center infrastructure,
etc...).
A social engineering attack exploiting a Password Change Lockout Period and Administrators using
weak passwords would avoid almost all the "red flags" users are trained to recognize as danger
signs of a phishing or social engineering exploit attempt. The attacker could tell the target "don't tell
me your password, that is against IT policy and dangerous; call the helpdesk and have them reset
your password. Remember; don't ever tell anyone your password!" Of course the attacker will
already know what this user's password will be for the next 24 hours and the system is vulnerable.
It would also be easy to iterate over a known list of users trying the well know reset password;
eventually an account with reset password will be discovered.
I can think of only one supporting argument for type of Password Change Lockout Period (but with
a slightly different implementation) for preventing a Denial of Service attack. If a user login is
compromised by an attacker so they can successfully login, the attacker could script successive
password changes with the intent of either crashing the system by degrading the performance of
the Authentication System as the Password History tables become unnaturally large or filling the
allotted drive space of the database from password changes. Allowing a number of changes (more
than 1) in a set time period (e.g. 5 changes in the previous 24 hours) allows for a reasonable
number of legitimate user initiated changes without requiring admin intervention and prevents a
legitimate DoS vector.
In summary, the need for a Password Change Lockout Period should no longer exist and this relic
from the 1980s introduces unnecessary limitations that reduces your overall security. We should all
consider eliminating Password Change Lockout Period from our systems.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_password.htm&type=0
“Require a minimum 1 day password lifetime”
“When you select this option, a password can’t be changed more than once in a 24-hour period.”