When it comes to computer data security, people rely on passwords as the first line of defense. While you should choose a password that is a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols, you should change them from time to time.
If you use password protection to sign in to your Windows machine, you can set some rules and standards to change the default behavior and enhance the protection policy. Let us see how to do this and check out the options available.
Note: Local Security Policy is only available in Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterpise editions. Unfortunately, this option is not included with the Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium editions.
Begin
Navigate to your Dashboard and launch Administration tools. Make sure you are logged in as an administrator to be able to make changes. In Administration tools you will find an option named Local privacy policy.
Next, open this location (double click) Local Security Policy and pilot to Security Settings -> Account Policy -> Password Policy from the left navigation pane.
Now, if you look to the right, you will see a list of related privacy policies and settings. These are basically flags that are turned on or off. You can change their current state to map them according to your requirements. Let us find out what each one of these means.
Note: Before we start looking at each policy, let me tell you that you can simply double-click any policy to open its configuration window. Then, as shown in the respective images, enter the number of days or turn on the flag and Apply.
Enforce Password History
With this option, you can set the number of unique passwords that you must use before the old password can be reused. You can set the number from 0 to 24.
Maximum password age
This setting defines the maximum number of days the password can be used before the system requires the user to change the password. The number varies between 1-998 days.
Minimum password age
This setting defines the minimum number of days the password must be used before the user can change the password. The number varies between 1-998 days.
Minimum password length
The user can define the minimum number of characters a password must contain to qualify as a valid password. It can be set between 1-14 characters.
Password must meet complex requirements
The complexity requirement requires that the password be at least 6 characters long, must contain upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols, and must not be the same as the current username.
Store passwords with reversible encryption
This setting is not recommended as it is equivalent to storing the user password in plain text. Sometimes it may be required by applications for authentication purposes. Try and avoid touching it.
Conclusion
Try and discover as much as you can. This is a good way to increase the security of your computer. Also, you should change the settings from time to time :).
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
