Applying Security to Passwords

You can increase the security of your system by enforcing password restrictions, which will make it more difficult for unauthorized users to access your system. You can specify that each password must include at least two characters of each of the following four character types:

  • Upper-case A-Z
  • Lower-case a-z
  • 0-9
  • !, @, #, $, %, ^, *, (, )

You can enforce a minimum length for the password, and set a maximum and minimum time limit, after which the password will not be accepted.

By default, lockout-on-login-failures is not enabled. The default settings are as follows:

  • configure account all password-policy lockout-on-login-failures off
  • configure account all password-policy lockout-time-period until-cleared

To increase security, you can lock users out of the system entirely after three failed consecutive logon attempts.

After the user‘s account is locked out (using the configure account password-policy lockout-on-login-failures command), it must be re-enabled by an administrator.

Version 33.1.1 adds additional restrictions for more secure user and password combinations. These include the following:

  • A user name and password cannot be the same.
  • The same letters or numbers cannot appear in succession in the pass phrase ( no '11' or 'aa' in the passphrase).
  • Sequential input (logical and keyboard indexed) beyond 3 characters is prohibited. For example, 1234, abcd, qwer, zxcv.
  • Any password used within the last three months is prohibited.