Administration Guide › Password Management › Password Policies › Configure Password Composition

Configure Password Composition

You can specify rules that determine the character composition of newly created passwords.

Note: When configuring password composition settings, consider the maximum password length when determining values for character requirements. If the total number of letters and/or numbers required exceed the maximum password length then all passwords will be rejected. For example, if Letters is set to 6 and Digits is set to 6, all passwords must contain at least 12 characters (6 letters and 6 digits). In this example scenario, if a maximum password length of 8 characters is specified, all passwords will be rejected.

Password composition settings include:

Minimum password length

Specify a minimum length for user passwords.

Maximum password length

Specify the maximum length for user passwords.

Maximum repeating characters

Determines the maximum number of identical characters that can appear consecutively in a password.

For example, if this value is set to 3, then “aaaa” can not appear anywhere in the password. However, “aaa” is acceptable within a password. You should set this value to ensure that users cannot enter passwords made up entirely of a single character.

Upper case letters

Specifies whether to allow upper case alphabetic characters and, if so, the minimum number a password must contain.

Lower case letters

Specifies whether to allow lower case alphabetic characters and, if so, the minimum number a password must contain.

Letters

Specifies whether to allow letters and if so, the minimum number a password must contain.

Note: The Letters check box is automatically selected if you allow upper or lower case letters.

Digits

Specifies whether to allow numbers and, if so, the minimum number a password must contain.

Letters and Digits

Specifies whether to allow letters and digits, and if so, the minimum number a password must contain. If this setting is set in conjunction with Digits, characters can satisfy both requirements. For example, if this setting and Digits are set to 4, the password “1234” is a valid password.

Note: The Letters and Digits check box is automatically selected if you allow upper or lower case letters, or numbers.

Punctuation

Specifies whether to allow punctuation marks, and if so, the minimum number a password should contain. These can be periods, commas, exclamation marks, slashes, dashes, and hyphens.

Non-printable

Specifies whether to allow non-printable characters, and if so, the minimum number a password should contain. These characters cannot be displayed on a computer screen.

Note: Certain browsers do not support non-printable characters.

Non-alphanumeric

Specifies whether to allow non-alphanumeric characters such as punctuation marks and other symbols located on the keyboard (“@”, “$”, and “*”) and if so, the minimum number a password should contain. Non-printable characters are also included. A non-alphanumeric character also satisfies Punctuation and Non-printable character requirements.