Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Security Handbook

Other Secure Practices

Most of the following items go without saying; however, a security text is not complete without at least mentioning them:

• Don't share your password. Period. All accountability and control goes out the window when people start sharing passwords. Instead, create separate logon accounts for everyone and assign them permissions as necessary.

• Change your password often. Every 60–90 days is industry standard. This helps mitigate the threat that passwords have been compromised, and it makes sharing passwords slightly more difficult.

• Use sufficiently long and complex passwords. Computing power is growing every day, and intelligent password cracking programs such as Crack and L0phtcrack can make quick work of poor or marginal passwords. ...