NET/MASTER Management Services (MS) System Management Guide

Setting System-Wide Password Management Attributes
Customizing the Operations Environment
5–6 115414 NonStop NET/MASTER MS System Management Guide
Use the PWEXPIRE operand to specify the password duration in days. Specify
PWEXPIRE as an integer in the range of 0 to 366. For example, to specify a password
life of 120 days, include the following statement in the INIT NCL procedure:
CMD "SYSPARMS PWEXPIRE=120"
The value 0 disables the password expiration feature for all users. The default value is
30 days.
This operand operates only on user IDs whose definition contains a Y in the Password
Expire field. The field appears on the User ID Management Services: User Attributes
panel. When a password expires, a user can log on with the user ID only by changing
the password; you cannot look up a user’s password.
Setting Unique Password
Interval
Forcing routine password changes cannot strengthen system security unless the new
passwords differ from earlier ones. Use the PWHISTORY operand to instruct
NonStop NET/MASTER MS to record the previous passwords associated with each
user ID definition record. A new password for a user ID cannot be the same as one of
the recorded passwords for that user ID. Specify PWHISTORY as an integer in the
range of 0 to 32. For example, to record five passwords for each user ID, include the
following statement in the INIT NCL procedure:
CMD "SYSPARMS PWHISTORY=5"
The default value is zero, which disables the feature. Disabling the feature does not
allow users to replace a user ID password with the current password of the user ID. In
other words, if the user ID DERRIDA has an expired password of BENWAY, the user
cannot replace the password BENWAY with BENWAY.
Setting Minimum Password
Length
The length of the password largely determines the amount of time an unauthorized
user would need to break the password. A longer password is “stronger,” because a
computer program, for example, would require more time to crack it.
Use the PWMIN operand to specify the minimum number of characters required for a
password. Specify PWMIN as an integer in the range of one to eight. For example, to
increase the minimum password length to five characters, include the following
statement in the INIT NCL procedure:
CMD "SYSPARMS PWMIN=5"
The default value is 3. Changes do not nullify existing passwords whose length is
shorter than that specified by the PWMIN operand.