Passphrase Help FAQ

A passphrase is a sentence-like string of words uses for authentication that is longer than a traditional password, easy to remember and difficult to crack.

While passwords have been used traditionally for many years, the tools used by people to hack a password are becoming more and more advanced over the years making it much simpler for a password to be stolen. With the use of a passphrase, the toolsets used to hack/steal passwords take much longer to complete and more often than not, the passphrase will expire before the passphrase can stolen.

IT Services Recommended passphrase requirements are as follows - length of 12 characters, Passphrase History of 10 (can't use the last 10 passphrases), Must contain Uppercase, lowercase, number, and a symbol.

With our new Passphrase reset tool, there are several options available to help reset your passphrase. The most popular option is the use of your mobile device. You must register your phone number to receive a text based code that will allow you to reset your password. Another option is to use a non-Ferris email address to receive the reset code. A third option is the use of the Management Engine ADSelfService Plus app (available on both iOS and Android) on your mobile device. For faculty/staff, there is yet another option that can be utilized directly on your Ferris-owned Windows (not available on Mac computers) computing device. This option can be accessed from the login screen or by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and selecting "Change Password".

IT Services is constantly looking at ways to enhance the experience with IT. Our current password reset application is limited in the options that it provides for password/passphrase reset capabilities, as well as providing the user with information about meeting the requirements while coming up with a new passphrase. With this new tool, we can accomplish these great features and greatly improve the passphrase reset process for all.

We will be communicating to campus starting 3/4/2020 about the new passphrase reset tool and it should be live starting 3/9/2020.