Password Complexity Guidelines
Your Pace password gives you access to almost every IT resource at Pace, including
very important personal information through the Portal. For this reason, it is important
to choose a password that will not only be easy for you to remember, but also hard for
others to guess.
We have certain requirements for the password in order to help guide you in creating
a complex, secure password, but you must also put some thought into creating the password.
Complex Password Rules
Your password...
- must not contain more than 3 consecutive characters of your first name, last
name, or username
- must be 12 or more characters long.
- must contain at least one character from three of these four categories:
- UPPERcase characters (A, B, C, ...)
- lowercase character (a, b, c, ...)
- numbers (1, 2, 3, ...)
- special characters (? % ^ * + ~ - = [ ] { } : , . # _)
(i.e. must have at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter,
and one number)
- must not be one that you have recently used
- cannot be changed more than once every 24 hours
Some useful hints for selecting a password:
- Use the first letters of each word from a song, phrase, or quote and
replace some letters with numbers. For example, "Mary had a little lamb
who's fleece was white as snow!" would become Mha11wfwwa5! (substituting
1 for l and 5 for s). Include punctuation for a more secure password.
- Try to make the password as long as possible. The longer the password,
the harder it is to crack or guess it.
- Do not write the password down and place on your desk!
