Password Best Practices

April 5, 2019

All users:

  • Do not write your password on a sticker attached to your device or in another obvious place.
  • Do not let any other person know your password.
  • Do not rely on another person to communicate the password to you unless this is an established procedure (in other words it is normal that the headquarters users set a password for the interviewers, but it must be communicated directly to the interviewer, not through another interviewer).
  • Logout (sign out) after you finish your work.
  • If you believe your password became known to another person, take immediate action - let the supervisors know that the password is compromised, request for a new password to be assigned to you.
  • If you’ve forgotten your password, contact your supervisor (or headquarters user) and request for a new password to be assigned to you. Your old password can not be recovered even by these users.

Supervisors and headquarters users, when resetting a password of an interviewer, make sure:

  • it is not easily guessed (for example, if all interviewers are issued passwords P1, P2, P3, P4,… they will eventually figure out the sequence);
  • similarly, never assign all (or some) interviewers the same password as other interviewers already have;
  • When passwords are communicated in writing, take measures to avoid confusion between similarly spelled letters or digits, for example 1 (one) and l (small letter L), or l (small letter L) and I (capital letter i), or O and 0 (capital letter o and digit zero);
  • Survey Solutions doesn’t require any of its passwords to be changed with certain periodicity (e.g. quarterly or annually), but it is still considered to be a good practice to periodically refresh the passwords. Warn your interviewers before you do this!
  • use different passwords for different purposes (e.g. different passwords for interviewer accounts and for the WiFi network they connect to in the office).