Question

At pine valley community hospital passwords are required to be a minimum of five characters and must contain one number HIM clerk Julie was hired more than a year ago and has yet to be prompted to change her password. This gave her concern, as she recalled password-management best practices from her recent studies.

What recommendations might Julie make to improve password management at PVCH? Create an example of a secure password and justify the selection.

Determine iff this password would meet the requirements you provided and jusifty your response.

Answer 1

A password is a word cosisting of characters and numbers which is used for user authentication to prove one's identity or to gain access to a resource and it should be kept secret from the unauthorized users. In the modern era, the use of username and password is a access tool which is used to protect the electronic appliances like computer operating system, mobile phone, ATM etc. The characteristic of framing a password differ in various organization. They have a policy in constructing password which includes dictation minimum length, upper and loer case charcters, special word, numbers and prohibited element like name. date of birth, address.

Julie must consider the following recommendation to improve the password management at PVCH. They are:

• Donot display the password on the screen while creating the password.
• Allow the password to have an adequate length without limitation like should be of 8 characters. The lengthy passsword is considered to be more secure.
• The password should contain atleast

1. One upper or lower case letters.
2. include one or more numerical digit.
3. Use of special character like @ ,#, $, %
4. prohibition of word present in password blacklist  i.e use of those password which should not be used or can be easily guessed by the attacker.
5. Prohibition of word that is present in personal information, company name, license plates, calender dates,telephone numbers etc.

• The user should re-enter the password after the period of inactivity.
• Passwords should be changed periodically.
• Limit the number of attempts that can be made in a specific time.
• The password should be used on multiple site .
• Prevent writing down password on a paper.
• Two-factor authentication is safer as the third party will send you a message or email alert if someone attempts to access your site.

The example of a secure password are: pV#56879, PineHos@2016, pineValley#hospital2345, #PVch@1985

The password created as above fulfills the recommended criteria for password generation and cannot be accessed easily by the attackers. The numbers used in the above example can be any number which can be easily remembered by them. Lets take the example PineHos@2016 to understand it better.

• The password has met the minimum length of character i.e 8 or more than 8 like in PineHos@2016. The length of character is 12.
• There is use of upper case letters i.e use of capital letters in between to enhance security. ex: PineHos@2016 where p and h are in capital letters.
• Use of lower case letters i.e means use of small letters like i,n,e,o,s in the above example is small letter.
• Use of special character in between like @.
• Use of numerical digit like 2016.

Although the use of company name is not supported but to make it a bit simpler for the user but harder for the attacker, the name of the company is used in different ways using an upper case letter to make it more secure. Since the above examples fulfill all the requirements for the secure passwords, it is safe and should undergo a periodic change. These passwords should not be written and should not be used in multiple sites.