What Is Happening
To help protect the USF community and enhance cybersecurity, IT is making changes to our NetID password requirements. Our new guidelines will require your password to be at least 15 characters long.
In the upcoming months, you should expect to receive an email prompting you to change your password, which you can do by visiting netid.usf.edu and clicking “Change your NetID password.” You won’t be required to change your password until you receive an email from us, but you are welcome to change it early, and you won’t be prompted to do it again.
To help with this transition, we have put together some guidelines on how to make your passwords both strong and easy to remember, along with a short video that provides suggestions on how to create new passwords or passphrases.
Password Requirements
Passwords/phrases must be 15 characters or more in length but there are no longer specific requirements for special characters or numbers (they are still allowed, just not required).
Guidelines for creating your new password are as follows:
- Don’t use a phrase you can find as a single entry in a dictionary.
- Don’t use a password that you have previously used.
- Your password must be 15 characters or longer.
- Complexity (additional numbers, special characters, etc.) is no longer required.
- Always use a different password for each of your accounts (work, personal banking, etc.) to ensure that if one account is compromised, your other accounts are still protected and consider acquiring/implementing a password manager to make this easy to manage.
Questions?
If you have any questions or have problems and need help - USF IT is here to help. Contact our Service Desk at:
Chat: https://itchat.usf.edu
Phone: (813) 974-HELP (4357)