Passphrases vs. Passwords

We have all been there…that panic you get when you waited until the last possible day to change your password and now you are “forced” to do so. There is a lot of pressure in choosing a password. It must be secure, have a special character, use upper and lower case characters, be a certain length and not something that we used in the recent past. All this and I need to remember it as well? That is correct…and no cheating with the old “post-it note under the keyboard reminder” either! IT has made things a little easier with password synchronization between our major systems (Active Directory, MyAU portal, Angel, Gmail, WebAdvisor, Kbox and eAcademy) but…have you thought of using a passphrase instead of a password? Take this phrase for example – “My dog jumps on the couch and wrinkles my newspaper!” and using only a few words I have a secure password that is easy to remember and very difficult to for someone else to figure out – “Dog couch newspaper!” and it works with all our major systems.

The self-service password (or passphrase) reset tool is available at http://www.ashland.edu/operations/information-technology/get-help-forms/self-service-password-reset-tool .