Password expiration policy - College of Charleston Libraries

The College is subject to several compliance mandates.  Among these being the Federal Information Security Management Act, FERPA, HIPAA, PCI, and Sarbanes-Oxley.  Basically, these laws state that we must adhere to security best practices.  A part of security best practices is the frequent change of password as well as strong passwords.  In addition, with the new My Charleston portal, we are one step closer to implementing single sign-on, meaning that the same user name/password is used to access multiple systems you have access to.  While making it easier for students by having fewer passwords to remember, this poses an additional risk of your private information being compromised if that one set of credentials were to be stolen.  For instance, the same password that lets you check your email allows access to the bank account information used to pay your bill.

The longer a password remains the same, the more likely it is to be compromised.   We are adhering to industry standard security best practices to protect your confidential information as well as the College’s.

Your password must be:

• Between 8 and 12 characters in length
• Password IS case-sensitive.
• Must have at least one number and symbol
• ( valid symbols are: ~ ^ * _ + ? – . )
• First character must be an English letter, and not a number or symbol
• Spaces are not allowed
• Password cannot match your user name (account name)