Password Hints, Guidelines & Responsibilities

The minimum requirements for OASIS passwords are as follows:

Must be between 8 and 16 characters
Must include only letters and numbers (a-z, A-Z, 0-9)
Must include at least 2 letters and 2 numbers
Cannot have been used in the previous 12 months
Cannot contain your first/last name and your Staff/Student ID
Minimum two character change from previous password

Valid choices: LTPkL007, 365days2go, 2mth2Christmas

Invalid Choices: 55592183 (no letter), fred7 (less than eight characters), curtininnovation2007 (more than sixteen characters), wotsupmn (no number)

Please Note: OASIS passwords and secret answers are case-sensitive, so note which letters you capitalise.

Hints for creating a strong password

The key to a good password is that it should be easy for you to remember, but difficult for anyone else to guess. The hints below will help in creating a good password:

Do not use any information which is easily obtained about you via the internet or other sources, e.g. current license plates, telephone numbers, tax file numbers, addresses or any similar personal information.
Do not use keyboard patterns such as 123ABC123ABC or QUERTY etc.
Use a combination of upper and lower case letters.
The longer a password is the more secure it is, even though the minimum is 8, longer is better.
A good password should be meaningful to you but appear random to others, good ways to achieve this may be:
- Using the first letters of a phrase, song title etc combined with numbers
- Jumbling the letters of phrases and adding lower case letters and numbers in the middle etc

Hints for creating a strong Secret Question & Answer Pair

As the secret question and answer is used to reset your password if you forget it, it is essential that it is as secure as your password.

Many of the hints for passwords are relevant to secret question and answer pairs, the following guidelines will also help:

Your secret answer should be:

Something that only you will know and not something available in your wallet or on the web
Not related to your OASIS user password in any way
Unlikely to change over time
Extremely difficult for others to guess, even if they see the question
Mismatched questions and answers are particularly secure

Password Protection - Your Responsibilities

Your account is for your use only and you are responsible for any activity that occurs from your account login.

Never give your password to someone else.
Do not record your password in a text file or word document on your computer
If you do write down your password, make sure it is stored in a very secure place, away from your computer and do not store the login id and password together.
Do not use the 'Remember password' feature of browsers and do not create a 'hot key' for your password.
Do not use any of the password examples that have been used in this document or any of the words on the login screen.
Don't be tricked into revealing your password to anyone. The only time that you will ever need to type your password is when logging in or changing it.
Always log out or lock your computer when you are not using it.