Your Password

A strong password is defined as being at least 14 characters, and including characters from at least 3 of the following 4 classes: upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters (except for the apostrophe ‘).

Having a strong password will help protect your account from people who might try and gain access by guessing at passwords people usually chose from (pet names, home towns, family members, etc).

Clark’s password requirements are:

• Minimum password length of 11 characters
• Cannot be one of your previous five passwords
• Cannot contain three or more characters from the user’s account name
• Cannot contain spaces or non-English characters
• Will expire 365 days after it was set
• Must contain 3 of the following categories of special characters except for the apostrophe ‘
  • Uppercase English letter (A to Z)
  • Lowercase English letter (a to z)
  • Number 0 to 9
  • Non-alphanumeric (!, #, $, & , =, etc…)

Because we store passwords for so many things, it is not uncommon to experience issues logging in to services for a day or two following a password change.

• Think about the services you access at Clark and the devices you access them from before you change your password.  Your password will probably need to be updated on each of those devices.
  • For example, most users check their email on Clark computers, personal laptops, in multiple browsers and on phones.  When you change your password, you need to update all of the email programs on each device.
• Whenever possible, change your password on campus, with a wired connection.
• If you have to change your password from off-campus, connect to the VPN first. Click here for information on connecting to the VPN.
• If you get locked out of your account, don’t despair.  Accounts automatically unlock after two hours (assuming wrong passwords haven’t been tried again) or if we are available at the Help Desk (helpdesk@clarku.edu, 508-793-7745), we can unlock them right away for you.