Protect Your Password: Strength and Secrecy
Your NetID and password are powerful assets and give you access to a number of Northwestern systems: networking, financial records, email, and more. Securing your password means securing Northwestern’s data—and your own.
Create a Long and Strong Passphrase/Password
Creating a sufficiently complex password doesn’t have to be…well, complex. To create a password that is both strong and memorable, try using a passphrase! Song lyrics, phrases, or other sentences are good options to create long passwords that are hard to crack but easy to remember. For example, the passphrase Mypasswordis31characterslong!!! is far more secure than the randomized password d8Shg-09.
Visit Northwestern IT's Web page about secure passphrases/passwords to review the requirements for NetID password complexity.
Never Share Your Passphrase/Password with Anyone
It is against Northwestern IT policy to share your password with anyone. Your NetID and password are intended to grant you access to your own data and to other potentially sensitive information contained on Northwestern systems.
Furthermore, your NetID and password act as your digital signature: if someone uses your credentials and violates University policy, you could be held accountable for those actions.
Store Your Passphrase/Password Securely
Passwords kept on a piece of paper or in a Word document on your computer can be compromised or lost. If you have forgotten or let your NetID password expire, please review the NetID Password Reset Guidelines.
Consider Using a Password Manager
The best way to secure your online accounts and credentials is to choose strong, unique passwords for each site or service you use, but keeping track of multiple long, complex passwords can be a challenge. A Password Manager can store your passwords in an encrypted format so that you don’t need to remember them, and can also help make up passwords for you using random letters, numbers, and characters. Many applications will also monitor your passwords to see if they are part of a data breach or appear on lists of compromised credentials, helping you know when you need to change your password on different platforms.
To help protect your digital identities, Northwestern has selected 1Password as the campus-wide password manager, with options available for both institutional and personal use.
Log Out Completely, Especially on Public Computers
Forgetting to sign out of your accounts on machines that do not belong to you may give the next person to use that computer access to your information. Whenever you use a friend's laptop or a public computer at a lab or library, take an extra moment to be sure you've logged out of anything that could contain personal information.