Microsoft active directory password complexity rules

However, requiring all users in an organization to adhere to such stringent password requirements might result in unhappy users and an over-worked Help Desk.

Consider implementing a requirement in your organization to use ALT characters in the range from through as part of all administrator passwords. ALT characters outside of that range can represent standard alphanumeric characters that do not add more complexity to the password. Passwords that contain only alphanumeric characters are easy to compromise by using publicly available tools. To prevent this, passwords should contain additional characters and meet complexity requirements.

The following table lists the actual and effective default policy values. Default values are also listed on the policy's property page. This section describes how an attacker might exploit a feature or its configuration, how to implement the countermeasure, and the possible negative consequences of countermeasure implementation.

Passwords that contain only alphanumeric characters are easy to discover with several publicly available tools. Configure the Passwords must meet complexity requirements policy setting to Enabled and advise users to use a variety of characters in their passwords.

When combined with a Minimum password length of 8, this policy setting ensures that the number of different possibilities for a single password is so great that it's difficult but possible for a brute force attack to succeed. If the Minimum password length policy setting is increased, the average amount of time necessary for a successful attack also increases.

If the default configuration for password complexity is kept, more Help Desk calls for locked-out accounts could occur because users might not be used to passwords that contain non-alphabetical characters, or they might have problems entering passwords that contain accented characters or symbols on keyboards with different layouts. However, all users should be able to follow the complexity requirement with minimal difficulty.

This security setting determines whether the password is stored using reversible encryption. If a password is stored using reversible encryption, then it becomes easier to decrypt the password. This setting is useful in certain cases, where an application or service requires the username and password of a user to perform certain functions.

This setting should be enabled, only if it is necessary. By default, this setting is disabled. If inheritance is blocked on the domain controllers DCs , password policy settings from policies linked at the root domain will be ignored. This eventually means that the password policy settings changes in that GPO will be ignored and whatever the current password policy is will be applied on the domain.

However, linking the GPO directly to the domain controllers has no effect. As long as the policy appears in the Group Policy Inheritance list, the settings should take effect. Active Directory Account Lockout Policy.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. A one-stop place for all things Windows Active Directory. Follow us for more content. Read more. In this blog post we will review how to check password requirements in Active Directory, including where password policies are configured, and stored. This password policy is the default and prior to Windows and the introduction of Fine-Grained Password Policies, the only password policy for users in the domain.

When user passwords are being set AD is not looking at Group Policy but rather at attributes of the root domain object in AD; it is always a good idea to double-check these values to ensure the password policy is set properly. The first command looks at the actual attribute names; the second looks at the same attributes but gives us clearer names and translates the time values e. In most environments the output here will match what is in the Default Domain Policy.

In case they do not, we must fully unpack what AD is doing here:. The password policy is read from Group Policy and applied to these attributes by the domain controller holding the PDC emulator role when it runs gpupdate.

But the settings do not have to come from the built-in Default Domain Policy. For example, a number and a lowercase character. For example, a number, a lowercase character and an uppercase character. Requiring 4 of 4 can result in end-user frustration. Some studies have shown that this requirement does not improve password entropy. To configure the password complexity, override the newPassword and reenterPassword claim types with a reference to predicate validations.

The PredicateValidations element groups a set of predicates to form a user input validation that can be applied to a claim type.

Open the extensions file of your policy. Search for the BuildingBlocks element. If the element doesn't exist, add it. Locate the ClaimsSchema element. Add the newPassword and reenterPassword claims to the ClaimsSchema element. Predicates defines a basic validation to check the value of a claim type and returns true or false. The validation is done by using a specified method element, and a set of parameters relevant to the method.

The following technical profiles are Active Directory technical profiles , which read and write data to Azure Active Directory. Override these technical profiles in the extension file. Use PersistedClaims to disable the strong password policy. Find the ClaimsProviders element. Add the following claim providers as follows:. Skip to main content.