Within the next six months, all W&L faculty and staff will be required to change their W&L network passwords, in order to comply with security standards. About two weeks prior to the expiration of your password, Information Technology Services will send you an e-mail prompting you to change your password.
Be careful to distinguish between legitimate W&L e-mail and fraudulent attempts, known as “phishing,” to get you to divulge personal information. The reminder message from W&L Information Technology Services will include your name, and will include directions similar to the following:
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Your current Washington and Lee network password expires on <date here>; please change it before then.
You can change your password by using this Web page: http://password.wlu.edu . You can also find this page by visiting the ITS home page (its.wlu.edu), and choosing the “Change Password” link in the green menu on the left side. Note that ITS will NEVER ask you to disclose your password; in this case we are asking for you to navigate on your own to a W&L Web site and log in there.
In keeping with the growing need for securing our network and the information stored there, W&L requires that all faculty and staff change their network passwords once a year. The password must meet these requirements:
- It may not contain the user’s account name (or any part of the user’s full name that exceed two consecutive characters)
- It may not re-use your prior W&L network passwords
- It must be at least eight characters in length
- It must contain characters from three of the following four categories:
- Upper case characters (A through Z)
- Lowercase characters (a through z)
- Numbers (0 through 9)
- Non-alphabetic characters (for example, !, $, #, %)
Use a password that is easy for you to remember, but difficult to guess. Using the first letter of each word of a personally meaningful expression or portion of a song, when combined with numbers and special characters, can be a good method for creating a password. Avoid using full words that can be found in a dictionary.
If you have any questions or need help with the password change process, please contact the Information Desk at x4357, or help@wlu.edu .
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Choosing a good password, and changing it regularly, are increasingly important to the security of your data and other W&L network resources. W&L’s network is regularly subject to probes by hackers who run programs that try to guess passwords.
