Nortel Networks NTRN10AN, 3500 Enhanced password restrictions, Password Reuse, Password Aging

2-136Operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) features

•spaces (deleted as entered), lowercase (switched to uppercase as entered)

•question mark (?)

Note 1: Carriage returns (the <Enter> key) are always ignored in the TL1 interface.

Note 2: To maintain case sensitivity when the password includes lowercase characters, you must enclose the password in double quotes (“). The double quotes are not included in the length of the password. When you enclose the password in double quotes, you cannot include a backslash (\), space, or double quote as part of the password.

Enhanced password restrictions

Enhanced password restrictions force you to choose more secure passwords using a password checking algorithm that satisfies the following requirements:

•a user can choose as their password, an existing password that is already associated with another user ID thereby never divulging an existing password

•passwords must be at least eight characters in length and contain a combination of alphanumeric characters including at least one alphabetic and at least one numeric or special character as listed above

•passwords cannot contain the associated user-ID

•the network element provides a mechanism that prevents a user from selecting a password that is part of the specified set of excluded passwords, such as locally used acronyms and surnames.

•to maintain case sensitivity when the password includes lowercase characters, you must enclose the password in double quotes (“)

Password Reuse

To ensure that users do not reuse passwords, the following requirements are enforced:

•there is a minimum waiting period (provisionable from 0 to 999 days) before an existing password can be updated

•the reuse of the most recently used five passwords is not allowed

Password Aging

Password aging forces users to change their passwords periodically. The longer a password remains in use, the greater the chance an intruder can discover that password. When you change your password frequently you reduce the chance of an intruder break-in.

The password aging interval can be set on a per user-ID basis. The User Privilege Code (UPC) 4 and 5 accounts cannot be disabled because of password aging which ensures that there is always a way to login to the network element. Users will be prompted for password changes accordingly.

OPTera Metro 3500 Multiservice Platform NTRN10AN Rel 12.1 Standard Iss 1 Apr 2004