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By
Jacek Jurga
Anyone
who uses the Lion’s Den or any school computer has been made painfully
aware of the new password regulations. These sweeping changes to the system
were made over the summer, and every student in the fall semester who
logged on was hammered by friendly messages stating that their password
has expired.
No
big deal, until you learn what the new password requirements are. The
days of the overly simplistic passwords, such as your mother’s name
or maybe your favorite food, are over.
The
new password cannot contain your name or your G-number; it needs to be
eight to fourteen characters long, and it must include at least three
of the following criteria: an upper-case letter, a lower-case letter,
a numeric digit, a non-alphanumeric digit (!@#$%^&* ()-_+={}[]<>).
In
addition, the password must be changed, every 60 days for students and
every 45 days for faculty, and you cannot repeat your previous two passwords.
Seems like a whole lot for a password... But is it really?
In
the dark ages of the Campus Pipeline, students and faculty alike were
faced with having to remember three different sets of user name/password
combinations: one to log on to the R.O.A.R.S. system for registration
and grades, one for Campus Pipeline e-mail and information, and one for
online courses.
But
with the introduction of the Lion’s Den, all these systems were
changed so that the same user name/password combination would let you
access all of these services. Vice President Chuck Chulvick calls this
the “single sign-on system.”
Chulvick,
who heads RVCC’s Learning and Technology Services, says the single
sign-on system really makes it a lot easier to access the RVCC online
services.
The
only problem with one password accessing so much personal information
is it needs to be that much harder to crack. So the new password requirements
make the whole system more secure by combining familiar words with less
predictable variables.
While
there have been no recorded incidents of a student’s account being
broken into, all these precautions were made to remove the issue.
The
most common mistake students actually made was not logging out of their
accounts, leaving personal information accessible to others. So a system
was also introduced that automatically logs users off if the account is
inactive for a period of time.
Thus,
the single sign-on makes it easier, and password requirements and log-offs
keep personal information safe.
And
just because the new passwords are harder to crack doesn’t necessarily
make them hard to create. A little advice from microcomputer specialist
Philip Strollo is to use simple words and then just capitalize one letter
and add a number at the end, such as “Blueberry1” or “Wildcat6.”
Not
too bad, after all.
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