Good Password Practices

Passwords are an important aspect of information security.  Hackers and identity thieves are constantly looking for ways to steal people’s usernames, passwords, and other personal information, which they can then use for their own illegal purposes or financial gain.  Simple passwords may cause a security breach, resulting in the theft of your user accounts.  Once compromised, your account could be used to launch attacks on other Pace University systems, companies, or institutions around the world.  If someone else could figure out your password, they could assume your electronic identity.  Hackers use software programs that attempt to crack users’ passwords and they are pretty effective at guessing passwords that are considered weak.  Thus, it is very important to create a strong password that you can remember easily, but that is very difficult for others to guess.    

Password Best Practices:

1. Create strong passwords which are at least 8 characters long, include upper-case, lower-case, numbers, and special characters, and which do not include words from any dictionary, or part of your name.
2. Don’t share your password(s) with anyone
3. Use different passwords for different types of accounts (e.g. Pace systems, personal bank accounts, personal email and social networking sites, etc.)
4. Change your passwords regularly
5. Don’t write down your password(s)

Tips to Create Passwords: Swap characters or numbers for letters and/or create an acronym from an easy-to-remember phrase:

Example 1 – Swap characters:  Phrase: “Singing in the rain”, Password: S!ng!ng1nTh3Ra!n

Example 2 – Create acronym:  Phrase: “My favorite color is blue”, Password: Mfcib!u3

Your MyPace password gives you access to almost every I.T. resource at Pace, including very important personal information through the MyPace Portal, so it is very important that you keep it safe.

For more details on how to create a strong password, visit the Password Complexity Guidelines page.