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Password Protection

It's critical to protect your passwords, identity, and financial information. It is strongly encouraged to change your password every 120 days or at the beginning of every semester to increase the personal security of your account and other JJC community members and to help protect business and academic resources throughout the college.

Password Creation Guidelines

If the password or passphrase is difficult to remember, yes you will find that you will need to write it down. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with writing them down, but they need to be adequately protected in order to remain secure and effective. Otherwise, someone else can easily find them and digitally impersonate you. Once you have learned the password or passphrase, make sure to properly dispose of the key to your identity.

To an attacker, a strong password should appear to be a random string of long characters. The following criteria can help you create a strong and memorable password or passphrase.

Make it Strong

1. Make it at least 8 characters in length (24 max).
2. Have it contain at least three of the following four categories:
   • One or more English uppercase characters (A-Z)
   • One or more English lowercase characters (a-z)
   • One or more base 10 digit (0-9)
   • One or more symbol (@, !, $, #, ?, (, ), &, etc...)
3. It should not contain your user account name.
4. Your old password should not be reused.
5. Change it every 120 days or at the beginning of every semester.

Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over.

Make it Memorable

Note: the following example passwords should not be used as they are examples and someone may try to use them to get into your account.

1. Make it lengthy by using a pass phrase.

   JJC supports the use of the space bar in passwords to create pass phrases. A pass phrase is often easier to remember than a simple password, as well as longer and harder to guess

   • Think of a sentence or a song lyric that you can remember.
     For example: "My son Nick is ten years old" or "I like to eat pizza at JJC"
   • Add complexity by misspelling words, mixing uppercase and lowercase letters, or substituting symbols and numbers.
     For example: "My sun Nick is 10 years old" or "I like 2 eat Za @ JJC"

2. Consider your password as multiple parts.

   • Create the central core of the password and a prefix and/or suffix which is specific to the service that is being protected.
     For example: The core might be "gPw4", from "general Password for..." If this password is to be used for the Chicago Sun-Times website, you might choose to add "CSt" to the beginning of the password core and "n" (for "news") to the end. This would make your password: "CStgPw4n" Your password for eBay might be eBAYgPw4A ("A" for "auctions").

3. Choose two words and concatenate them together.

   • After joining the words switch letters with punctuation, symbols or numbers combined with variations in case, to improve the strength of your password.
     For example: Combine Respect and Integrity to get, "RespectNIntegrity." Switch some vowels with numbers (e=3; i=1) to get, "R3sp3ctN1nt3g1ty."

4. Combine a few pronounceable "nonsense" words with a character, symbol or number between or after them.

   • Pronounceable nonsense words are easier to remember than random characters.
     For example: "Noidi2Doidi148"

Test Your New Password or Pass Phrase with Password Checker from Microsoft

Password Checker is a non-recording feature on Microsoft’s Web site that helps determine your password's strength as you type. A strong to best strength level is what you're shooting for.

Password Checker