Georgia Highlands College

PASSWORD PROTECTION POLICY

1.0 Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to establish a standard for creation of strong passwords, the protection of those passwords, and the frequency of change. Passwords are an important aspect of computer security. They are the front line of protection for user accounts. A poorly chosen password may result in the compromise of Georgia Highlands College's entire network. As such, all Georgia Highlands College employees (including contractors and vendors with access to Georgia Highlands College systems) are responsible for taking the appropriate steps, as outlined below, to select and secure their passwords.

2.0 Scope

The scope of this policy includes all personnel who have or are responsible for an account (or any form of access that supports or requires a password) on any system that resides at any Georgia Highlands College facility, has access to the Georgia Highlands College network, or stores any non-public Georgia Highlands College information.

3.0 Policy

3.1 General

All system-level passwords (e.g., root, enable, NT admin, application administration accounts, etc.) must be changed on at least a quarterly basis.
All user-level passwords (e.g., email, web, desktop computer, etc.) will be changed quarterly.
User accounts that have system-level privileges granted through group memberships or programs such as "sudo" must have a unique password from all other accounts held by that user.
Passwords must not be inserted into email messages or other forms of electronic communication.
Where SNMP is used, the community strings must be defined as something other than the standard defaults of "public," "private" and "system" and must be different from the passwords used to log in interactively. A keyed hash must be used where available (e.g., SNMPv2).
All user-level and system-level passwords must conform to the guidelines described below.

3.2 Guidelines

3.2.1 General Password Construction Guidelines

Passwords are used for various purposes at Georgia Highlands College. Some of the more common uses include: user level accounts, web accounts, email accounts, screen saver protection, voicemail password, and local router logins. Since very few systems have support for one-time tokens (i.e., dynamic passwords which are only used once), everyone should be aware of how to select strong passwords.

Poor, weak passwords have the following characteristics:

The password contains less than eight characters
The password is a word found in a dictionary (English or foreign)
The password is a common usage word such as:
1. Names of family, pets, friends, co-workers, fantasy characters, etc.
2. Computer terms and names, commands, sites, companies, hardware, software.
3. The words "Georgia Highlands College" or any derivation.
4. Birthdays and other personal information such as addresses and phone numbers.
5. Word or number patterns like aaabbb, qwerty, zyxwvuts, 123321, etc.
6. Any of the above spelled backwards.
7. Any of the above preceded or followed by a digit (e.g., secret1, 1secret)

Strong passwords have the following characteristics:

Contain both upper and lower case characters (e.g., a-z, A-Z)
Have digits and punctuation characters as well as letters e.g., 0-9, !@#$%^&*()_+|~-=\`{}[]:";'<>?,./)
Are at least eight alphanumeric characters long.
Are not a word in any language, slang, dialect, jargon, etc.
Are not based on personal information, names of family, etc.
Passwords should never be written down or stored on-line. Try to create passwords that can be easily remembered. One way to do this is create a password based on a song title, affirmation, or other phrase. For example, the phrase might be: "This May Be One Way To Remember" and the password could be: "TmB1w2R!" or "Tmb1W>r~" or some other variation.

NOTE: Do not use either of these examples as passwords!

3.2.2 Password Protection Standards

Do not use the same password for Georgia Highlands College accounts as for other non-Georgia Highlands College access (e.g., personal ISP account, option trading, benefits, etc.). Where possible, don't use the same password for various Georgia Highlands College access needs. For example, select one password for the Academic systems and a separate password for IT systems. Also, select a separate password to be used for an NT account and a UNIX account.

Do not share Georgia Highlands College passwords with anyone, including administrative assistants or secretaries. All passwords are to be treated as sensitive, confidential Georgia Highlands College information.

Here is a list of "don’ts":

Don't reveal a password over the phone to ANYONE
Don't reveal a password in an email message
Don't reveal a password to the boss
Don't talk about a password in front of others
Don't hint at the format of a password (e.g., "my family name")
Don't reveal a password on questionnaires or security forms
Don't share a password with family members
Don't reveal a password to co-workers while on vacation

If someone demands a password, refer them to this document or have them call someone in the Information Technology Department.

Do not use the "Remember Password" feature of applications (e.g., Eudora, Outlook, Netscape Messenger).

Again, do not write passwords down and store them anywhere in your office. Do not store passwords in a file on ANY computer system (including Palm Pilots or similar devices) without encryption.

Change all passwords quarterly.

If an account or password is suspected to have been compromised, report the incident to Information Technology Department and change all passwords.

Password cracking or guessing may be performed on a periodic or random basis by the Information Technology Department. If a password is guessed or cracked during one of these scans, the user will be required to change it.

3.2.3 Application Development Standards

Application developers must ensure their programs contain the following security precautions. Applications:

should support authentication of individual users, not groups.
should not store passwords in clear text or in any easily reversible form.
should provide for some sort of role management, such that one user can take over the functions of another without having to know the other's password.
should support TACACS+ , RADIUS and/or X.509 with LDAP security retrieval, wherever possible.

3.2.4 Use of Passwords and Pass-phrases for Remote Access Users

Access to the Georgia Highlands College Networks via remote access is to be controlled using either a password authentication or more preferably a public/private key system with a strong pass-phrase.

3.2.5 Pass-phrases

Pass-phrases are generally used for public/private key authentication. A public/private key system defines a mathematical relationship between the public key that is known by all, and the private key, that is known only to the user. Without the pass-phrase to "unlock" the private key, the user cannot gain access.

Pass-phrases are not the same as passwords. A pass-phrase is a longer version of a password and is, therefore, more secure. A pass-phrase is typically composed of multiple words. Because of this, a pass-phrase is more secure against "dictionary attacks."

A good pass-phrase is relatively long and contains a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numeric and punctuation characters. An example of a good pass-phrase:

"The*?#>*@TrafficOnThe101Was*&#!#ThisMorning"

All of the rules above that apply to passwords apply to passphrases.

4.0 Enforcement

Any employee found to have violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

5.0 Definitions

Terms Definitions

Application Administration Any account that is for the administration of an application

Account (e.g., Oracle database administrator, ISSU administrator).

6.0 Revision History

09/16/03 Policy origination tm

09/17/03 Group review tm

12/08/04 Policy review jp

11/09/05 Policy review jp