RE: Minimum password requirements

["dave kleiman" <dave () isecureu com>]

You might want to make sure "F" meets company policy to cover FMLA etc. Some
company personnel could be on extended medical leave for longer then 30
days.

Minimum password length, which is "arguable", (stealing Sonja's term) should
be set to 8 or higher.  The NSA/NIST guidelines use 12, the Common Criteria
use 8. In MSFT environment greater than 7 insures that you at least break
into the second half of the LM hash store. But, you really want to insure
the LM hash store of the password does not even exist. If this is a MSFT
environment invoke the NoLMHash store on all machines.


______________________________________
Dave Kleiman, CISSP, CISM, CIFI, MCSE
www.SecurityBreachResponse.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Robinson, Sonja [mailto:SRobinson () HIPUSA com] 
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 10:27
To: 'Randall M Gunning'; security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Minimum password requirements

a.  I'd say 30 but it's aruable.
b.  I'd say 1 but it's arguable.
c.  OK
d.  OK
e.  OK
f.  I'd give 30 on disable.  It takes a while for managers to realize they
need files from someone's share before they're deleted.
=========== I would add
g.  pwd min length = 7
h.  no generic accounts unless documented and approved i.  password
complexity = upper, lower, character, #  - 3 out of the 4.
j.  User ID Standards- first init, last name (full name or certain # of
characters, say 8?) or somethign similar but make it consistent.



-----Original Message-----
From: Randall M Gunning [mailto:securityfocus () randygunning com]
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 11:27 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Minimum password requirements


I am working on implementing some minimum standards for our department. I am
wondering what the list thinks of these standards:

a. Passwords must be changed at least every 90 days.
b. Passwords cannot be changed for at least 14 days.
c. Previous passwords cannot be reused (at least the last 10).
d. User ids and passwords are "owned" by an individual and must not be
shared with others.
e. User accounts that have not been accessed (i.e. logged in to) for 30 days
will be deactivated.
f. Inactive user accounts will be deleted after 14 days.

The numbers I have used are what I used in the corporate world for systems
that had no special security requirements (i.e. they did not have any
confidential data on them). What are other people doing for this type of
standard, if anything? Also, if you had your choice (not subject to a
committee agreeing), what would you choose for these items? 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Randy




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