We care about your data safety and overall user experience. Policies are meant to be guidelines for us as well as you, the user- so that we can ensure high levels of service and quality in our work as we strive to become a world-class IT support shop. If you have concerns or questions on policies, please email us at support@chemistry.ohio-state.edu.

1. Passwords are assigned to individuals, not computers. Users logging in to computers with network access must use their individual account.
2. Strong passwords are required. A strong password consists of a combination containing at least 3 of the 4 following: upper case characters, lower case charaters, punctuation, and numerals.
3. Do not use previously used passwords (the system prevents this).
4. Passwords must be changed at least ever 180 days.

1. be 8 characters long
2. contain upper AND lowercase letters
3. contain digits OR punctuation characters (such as !@#$%^&*()_+|~<>?,./-=\'`;:")
4. not contain a name or recognizable word (the dictionary includes Chinese, Hebrew, Star Trek lingo including Klingon, etc.)

A simple alpha-numeric non-word is not good enough, but if you uppercase one or more letters and add a ! or . somewhere, it's still easy to remember, but many times harder for a password cracking program to crack.