Graduate Windows Lab

The password needs to meet the following requirements

• Minimum 8 characters
• Must not contain your name or a dictionary word
• Must contain at least 3 of the character set (Capital letters, small letters, numbers, special characters)

Tips for choosing a Good Password

• Use a memorable month and year combination. Example "November2015!" (Make sure you don't use your birthday, it can be guessed)
• Use Passphrases Example “My 1st Pet”.
• Combine unrelated words Example “Windows+Football”, “Pizza&Tiger”.
• Use 0’s (zeroes) instead of o’s and 1’s (one's) instead of l’s (L's) Example“I love sb” will become “I 10ve sb” (love becomes one+zero+v+e).
• First Letters of Words in a Sentence: Think of a sentence, then use the first letter of each word or substitute numbers and punctuation appropriately. Example “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are!” becomes the password “Ttl*Hiwwur!”.

More tips

• Use misspelled words Example “WhutdooUmeenIkan'tSpel?”.
• Reverse of a word/sentence Example “My Password!” will become “yM drowssaP!”.
• Shift the characters in a sentence based on keyboard layout Example “foo bar” will become “gpp nst”. Note that in general keyboard layouts ‘f’s next character is ‘g’, ‘o’s next character is ‘p’, ‘b’s next character is ‘n’ and so on.
• Change your password regularly once in 3 months.
• Never write down your password anywhere or share your password with anyone.
• Do NOT use the sample passwords mentioned in the tips. Passwords obtained from the tips can be “fairly secure”. But use your own method derived from the combination of tips to choose your password.

References
http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/passwords/passwords.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~help/security/choosing_passwords.html
http://www.cs.umd.edu/faq/Passwords.shtml