Students, faculty and staff that have not upgraded their eight character passwords to passphrases will experience difficulties accessing their accounts starting Nov. 1.
Information Educational Technology (IET) will block an individuals’ account access to all campus services until he or she upgrades to a passphrase. A passphrase is 12 to 48 characters long and can include words from the dictionary.
Passwords will expire on a rolling basis and users will be notified two weeks prior to their expiration. IET began sending out warnings on Monday.
Julie McCall, communications analyst with IET, said that all passwords will expire between November and February.
“If you do it now, you don’t have to worry about it later,” she said. “It’s not optional. There are no exceptions for anyone.”
Access to anything that uses UC Davis authentication will be denied until passwords are upgraded. Since network problems do happen, students should upgrade as soon as possible, McCall said.
“They don’t want to get caught during midterms or finals with an expired password,” she said. “They don’t want to be in crisis mode.”
IET launched the Passphrase Change Campaign in late April. As of yesterday, 65.53 percent of students have upgraded their passwords, with 9,102 students still needing to do so.
To upgrade, go to computingaccounts.ucdavis.edu and select “change your passphrase.”
– Janelle Bitker
