• Measures the effectiveness of a password in resisting guessing and brute-force attacks
• Estimates the number of attempts needed to guess a password correctly

Group Policy Editor for Password Policies

• Used to create password policies in Windows
• Available for local machines, and global policy orchestrator can be used in domain environments

Five Characteristics of Password Policies

Password Length

• Longer passwords are harder to crack
• Strong passwords should be at least 12 to 16 characters
• Longer passwords increase security exponentially

Password Complexity

• Combines uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters
• Complexity makes passwords resistant to brute force attacks
• The more character choices, the more secure the password

Password Reuse

• Avoid using the same password for multiple accounts
• Reusing passwords increases vulnerability

Password Expiration

• Requires users to change passwords after a specific period
• Overemphasis on expiration can lead to poor password choices