DIGITALSECURITYGUIDE Kerberos password. • Windows 98 and 95 only support passwords up to 14 characters long. In a Windows environment, there are certain security advantages to be gained if your password is 15 characters or longer. Can I write my password down? You should avoid writing down your password or giving it to others. You should especially avoid writing it down and leaving it in a non-secured place such as on a post-it on your monitor or a piece of paper in your desk. If you absolutely must write something down, we suggest doing the following: • Don't write down the entire password, but rather a hint that would allow you (but nobody else) to reconstruct it. • Keep whatever is written down in your wallet or other place that only you have access to and where you would immediately notice if it was missing or someone else gained access to it. Why is this important? It is very common for intruders to attempt to break-in to systems (both Unix and Windows) at SCS by trying to guess people's passwords. Sometimes they succeed, and when they do it is often because people chose very poor passwords (like "password" or "administrator"). These break-ins can result in a significant amount of downtime, lost work, and loss of privacy (for example, if there is credit card and other financial data on your machine). Intruders often also install keyboard sniffers that let them gather additional passwords and put more machines at risk. They can also conduct dictionary attacks against a host's password database, and literally try out tens of thousands of potential passwords per second, which is why words and simple variants of words are not good passwords. How to set a password on your windows computer 1. Open User Accounts by clicking the Start button clicking Control Panel, clicking User Accounts and Family Safety, and then clicking User Accounts. 2. Click Create a password. If there's already a password for this user account, you can change it by clicking Change your password. 3. Type the password in the New password box, and then type the password again in the Confirm new password box. 4. If you would like to use a password hint, type the hint in the Password hint box. 5. Click Create password. Changing your Windows password on a regular basis is a good habit to help keep your PC secure. You might also want to change your Windows 7 password if you have been having problems remembering or entering 9