#0015 New Government Password Recommendations

The US Government Agency NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued new security guidelines for passwords. NIST no longer recommends password complexity using a mix of upper & lower case with letters and symbols. NIST has determined that password length is more effective. The new guidline recommends between 16-64 characters. This allows users to use a short phrase thats much easier to remember. The second recommendation is for companies to STOP having users change their passwords on regular intervals. This practice leads to users simply adding a number at the end that increments with each change.

This blog post is simply a quick summary. For full details, please refer to NIST Special Publication 800-63B on the NIST.gov website.