2.7 Password Policy Guidelines
Our recommendations for setting a password policy are in line with the latest recommendations from NIST as of June 2018.
- The minimum length of a password must be at least 8 characters. You can choose to increase this number to 10 or 12.
- The maximum length of a password must be at least 64 characters. You can choose to increase this number to 80 or 100.
- Do not cause passwords to expire without reason. A password must be expired only when the user has forgotten it and has requested a reset.
- Allow all printable ASCII characters, including spaces, and accept all UNICODE characters too.
- Do not force the user to use a combination of upper case characters, lower case
characters, numbers and special characters.
Instead recommend to him that he uses “passphrases” instead of passwords, and that’s the reason why the recommended minimum length must be at least 8 and the maximum length must be at least 64.
Passphrases are sentences like “Wow, I like the freedom to choose this password!!” (yes, with spaces, a comma and exclamation marks in it)
Parent topic: Secure Installation and Configuration