Guidelines for Protecting Your Password

Select reasonably long passwords that cannot be guessed easily. Avoid using words in your native language that appear in a dictionary. Consider including numbers in your password. Alternatively, let the system generate passwords for you automatically.

Never write down your password.

Never give your password to another user. If another user obtains your password, change it immediately.

Do not include your password in any file, including the body of an electronic mail message. (If anyone else reveals a password to you, delete the information promptly.)

The character strings that appear with your actual password can make it easy for someone to find your password in a file. For example, a quotation mark followed by two colons ("::) always comes after a user name and password in an access control string. Someone attempting to break into the system could obtain your password by searching inadequately protected files for this string. Another way in which you might reveal your password is by using the word “password” in a text file, for example:

My password is GOBBLEDYGOOK.

If you submit a batch job on cards, do not leave your password card where others may be able to obtain your password from it.

Do not use the same password for accounts on different systems.

An unauthorized user can try one password on every system where you have an account. The account that first reveals the password might hold little information of interest, but another account might yield more information or more privileges, ultimately leading to a far greater security breach.

Before you log in to a terminal that is already on, invoke the secure terminal server feature (if enabled) by pressing the Break key. The secure server ensures that the OpenVMS login program is the only program able to receive your login and thereby eliminates the possibility of revealing a password to a password grabber program. This is particularly relevant when you are working in a public terminal room.

A password grabber program is a special program that displays an empty video screen, a screen that appears to show the system has just been initialized after a crash, or a screen that shows a nonexistent logout. When you attempt to log in, the program runs through the normal login sequence so you think you are entering your user name and password in a normal manner. However, once the program receives this key information and passes it on to the perpetrator, it displays a login failure. You might think you mistyped your password and be unaware that you have just revealed it to someone else.

Unless you share your password, change it every 3 to 6 months. HP warns against sharing passwords. If you do share your password, change it every month.

Change your password immediately if you have any reason to suspect it might have been discovered. Report such incidents to your security administrator.

Do not leave your terminal unattended after you log in.

You might think the system failed and came back up again, when actually someone has loaded a password-stealing program. Even a terminal that displays an apparently valid logout message might not reflect a normally logged out process.

Routinely check your last login messages. A password-stealing program cannot actually increase the login failure count, although it looks like a login failure to you. Be alert for login failure counts that do not appear after you log in incorrectly or that are one less than the number you experienced. If you observe this or any other abnormal failure during a login, change your password immediately, and notify your security administrator.