Wednesday, April 4, 2007

“Very” Strong Passwords in Buzzsaw

If you are a site administrator in Buzzsaw, the capability to incorporate some very tight password rules exist.

Strong Passwords: You may already know that passwords must contain at least 8 characters, at least one uppercase character, and one number. But now, kick it up a notch with Buzzsaw’s “Enable Strong Passwords” option. What is a Strong Password? It must:

  • start with a letter
  • be at least 8 characters long
  • contain at least one capital letter
  • contain at least one number
  • be different from the previous ten passwords
  • be different from any password used in the previous six months.



Need more passwords security? How about requiring special characters (such as !@#$%^&*), or excluding words found in a standard dictionary, or exclude the user's name from the password.

We can then choose when these new password rules will go into effect. Should they pick a new password immediately? Or when the users are required to create a new password due to password expiration?


Here is the message alerting a member that they are required to choose a new password


Here is the message telling the user that they haven't complied with some of the new password rules


Does everyone need this level of security? No. But it's good to know that this enhanced level of security is available for those high-security projects.