Take extra care when choosing your password. Your password determines how safe you are on the Internet. Make use of a passphrase (e.g. +bullybeefwithcheese2), for passphrases are difficult to guess, but easy to remember. There are other ways too – do some research of your own – the more unique the password, the better the security.

When choosing a password it:

Should be:

• made up of capitals, lowercase, special characters, numbers and symbols
• kept private – only you should know what it is
• unique and original
• easily remembered
• long enough

Shouldn’t be:

• written down or found in any dictionary
• able to be guessed by programs in less than a week
• compiled of well-known facts about yourself  such as the names of your children
• repetitions of the keyboard keys  (e.g. qwerty, 12345, !@#, to name a few)

Your NWU network password:

This is the password you use in conjunction with your NWU number. For more information on Password Management at the NWU visit services.nwu.ac.za/it/sc/password-management.

• Expires every 90 days.
• You will not be able to use your last 3 passwords for your next password change.
• The length of your password is a minimum of 5 (five) characters and a maximum of 52 (fifty two).
• Passwords are case sensitive.
• Should contain a mixture of alpha numeric, non-alpha numeric, numeric and at least one special character (e.g. @).
• You alone may change your password.