Password Management Policy

To many people, passwords are a necessary evil; to others, they are just a waste of time. No matter what camp you're in, over time the technical world has developed several basic processes that seem to work very well. These are password aging, account locking, password complexity, and password history.

Password Aging

The password aging parameter is set in the user 's profile. (We'll be discussing profiles shortly.) It refers to the length of time before a password expires .

Account Locking

Account locking consists of two parameters that are set in the user's profile:

1. How many failed login attempts will be allowed before the account is locked.

2. How long the account will remain locked when it is locked

Password Complexity

Although Oracle provides a minimum set of criteria, some shops create their own scripts to force things like upper and lowercase, a minimum number of numerics, or a special character. Such customized routines are included in CREATE/ALTER PROFILE statements. All of the nuances in the criteria that are developed for passwords are referred to collectively as password complexity .

Password History

Another profile parameter ” password history ”specifies how many times a password must be changed before a particular password can be used again.